Antonio Carluccio: British chef goes bush in WA

British foodie Antonio Carluccio went wild when he accompanied an Aboriginal cultural guide.

British chef Antonio Carluccio samples indigenous fare in his 6 Seasons on SBS next Thursday.

Food is the story of one’s country, says Antonio Carluccio, who began exploring Italy’s story in the Piedmont mountains by hunting for mushrooms and truffles at the age of seven with his father. That pursuit became a lifelong passion for the godfather of Italian cuisine, as he became known after moving to London as a wine merchant in 1975.

Carluccio’s Caffe, with 97 outlets across Britain, began as one store in Covent Garden in 1999. His love of rustic Italian cooking is reflected in 22 books and many TV appearances, notably Two Greedy Italians, the popular BBC TV series in which he travelled back to childhood haunts with garrulous compatriot Gennaro Contaldo.

And in between a punishing professional career Carluccio has roamed the English countryside, driven by his love of natural ingredients and his expertise in finding local fungi.

So when Carluccio headed down under last year — for perhaps his 20th trip to Australia, he’s lost count — he reconnected with that love of simple foods, modest means and closeness to nature his childhood ramblings instilled in him.

Carluccio had come to Western Australia’s southwest to film Antonio Carluccio’s 6 Seasons, a six-part journey through the karri forests and coastal heath of Australia’s far corner in search of old ways of eating and new ingredients.

“I knew something was touching me a lot because it reminded me of my childhood, living in the country and being happy,” Carluccio tells Review from his home in London.

Happiness has eluded him from time to time, he admitted in his 2012 autobiography A Recipe for Life. Periods of depression dogged him at the height of his fame; one bad bout, in 2008, led him to make a clumsy attempt on his life with a pair of scissors, after his third marriage fell over.

The person one sees in 6 Seasons is a genial, slightly fragile septuagenarian who, in the company of Nyungar cultural guide Richard Walley, relishes being brought in touch with the rhythms of six Aboriginal seasons.

Walley is co-director with veteran documentary-maker Carmelo Musca, as well as providing the haunting soundtrack on didgeridoo. The series is an unassuming and — compared with Two Greedy Italians — low-budget production that has friendship at its core.

Snowy-haired Carluccio turns 80 next year and walks with his trademark wooden staff decorated, in this case, with indigenous motifs. He clearly enjoys being around the taller, athletic-looking Walley. Along their journey, the pair watch children pull freshwater crustaceans from a remote river; debate the qualities of native red pepperberries, an ingredient that enraptures Carluccio; and improvise with juicy quandong bush fruit to create what the Italian half-teasingly pronounces as “condom sauce”.

“Richard is a fantastic human being,” says Carluccio, on the phone from London.

“He has his people in his blood, and that was my first admiration for him. He stays anchored to the core of ideas of Aboriginal culture, and taking care of nature.”

Walley is a fluent Nyungar speaker and prominent cultural adviser. He was equally attracted to working on the series when Musca approached him with the idea — even though he had never heard of Carluccio.

“Carmelo said ‘this guy would like to meet you, his partner Sabine is studying archeology and she wants to meet a local Aboriginal person’,” he says. “So we met for a chat and I could feel good energy. Antonio told me he was a cook. At the end he said, ‘It would be nice to do something together’, and I said yes.”

The stars aligned and the state tourism commission came on board. “We found we could do something that focused on Nyungar culture and West Australian food,” Walley says.

Their on-screen odyssey began with a ceremony at Kings Park, the wildflower-strewn expanse of parkland overlooking Perth.

“We thought the story of Perth itself was important, so at Kings Park I performed a ‘welcome to country’,” says Walley, who led a similar opening ceremony for the 2011 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth. “Then the other places we picked had stories behind them, like Wadjemup or Rottnest Island. It’s surrounded by food, from King George whiting to crayfish, and we were able to do a cooking session while talking about the island’s history of occupation, incarceration and tourism.”

Carluccio was intrigued by Rottnest, Perth’s holiday island. It has a grim history as a prison for Aboriginal men brought down from the Kimberley and Pilbara in the late 1800s.

“When we went over to Rottnest Island, there was a cemetery being put in order by five guys,” recalls Carluccio. “At the end of the day, they lit a fire and took eucalyptus leaves and gathered around the fire.”

The gesture was to respect the Aboriginal dead. “That was unbelievable, something spiritual you never see anywhere else,” he says. “It was done not with religion but with the soul.”

On the shores of Rottnest, the Italian rustled up a pot of bouillabaisse. “And I showed Antonio how we wrap up a fish in paperbark and chuck it in the coals,” says Walley.

Another episode is set in Australia’s only monastery town at New Norcia, two hours’ drive north of Perth. It was founded in 1847 by Spanish Benedictine monks, who planted olive groves, baked bread and educated generations of Aboriginal mission children in often austere conditions. Walley’s relatives, including his father, were among them.

“My Aunty Sheila and Aunty Teresa came up because they were girls who grew up in New Norcia. We took the kids up and collected delicious gilgie (freshwater crustacean) for a dish, and we told him the story of the mission, some of which is pretty sad,” he says.

The overlap of local history and cooking sessions was a revelation to Carluccio, who knew as little about Western Australia’s past as Walley had known about his famous guest. The pair drove through the hilly country east of Perth and the plains beyond, from York to Beverley, while Walley explained that the creation spirit Wagyl had shaped the rises and river valleys.

They made damper on coals in a forest bush camp. “I’ve never seen paradise, but it looks a little like this,” says Carluccio wistfully.

Along the way, Carluccio became acquainted with ingredients such as kangaroo, pearl meat, marron and gilgie, wild duck, bush pepper, quandongs and bush limes. “I have here on my kitchen table a packet of Australian native pepperberries,” he says. “They add wonderful red colour to the sauce and the most wonderful pepper I’ve tasted.”

Says Walley, “We did kangaroo meals and damper in different forms, and we used bardi grubs, which Antonio ate for the first time.” Carluccio’s expression is filmed as he nibbles on the plump bug, and it is as inscrutable as his comment: “I have never had similar food.”

He’s more enamoured of native quandong fruit. “It’s the peach of the woods,” he says as he cooks his own version of duck a l’orange using quandong, wild duck, bush pepper and honey. “There’s everything here, just pick it.”

Inevitably, their journey takes a detour into the heart of haute cuisine when they drop into the Margaret River Gourmet Escape. Foodies gather under marquees or eat picnic feasts on the beach as Walley picks up his didgeridoo to perform for them. A few celebrity chefs make guest appearances, from MasterChef’s Marco Pierre White and Matt Preston to Scottish-born Jock Zonfrillo, who arranges kangaroo prosciutto on the plate in the shape of roo footprints, framed by pickled wild grasses.

Other casual appearances include indigenous chef Mark Olive, who introduces Carluccio to a group of Aboriginal teenagers being trained to enter jobs in hospitality.

Perth celebrity butcher Vince Garreffa, an old friend of Carluccio, blends “native” meats with pork mince to make tangy sausages.

Antonio Carluccio’s 6 Seasons, which screens on SBS TV from Thursday, is a new venture for Walley, a painter, performer and playwright who has served two terms as chairman of the Australia Council’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board.

His first SBS documentary was in 1988 when Didgeridoo in Deutschland, directed by Musca, captured Walley performing with the East Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also performed at London’s Albert Hall, and toured his Middar Dance Group to Greece, Slovenia, Japan, Mexico, the US and Canada.

Walley has also made several trips to France as an adviser to skin product company Aveda; other French perfume executives have consulted him on the therapeutic and aromatic qualities of native sandalwood and bush oils. He was awarded an Order of Australia in 1993 and an honorary doctorate by Murdoch University.

Carluccio has his own share of honours — Italy’s Commendatore knighthood bestowed by the president in 1998 and an OBE from the Queen in 2007.

His frenetic pace is easing slightly these days, since offloading ownership of the restaurant chain. He acts as adviser only: “The creative side — that’s what I’m good at,” he says. “I started to employ very good people. The human side is very important and the company is thriving because it’s being run with heart.”

But the pace is quickening again for the launch next month of his 23rd recipe book, Antonio Carluccio’s Vegetables, in which he shows how to prepare vegetables Italian style to make Swiss chard and artichoke tart, beetroot lasagne and wild mushroom strudel.

“I take it very seriously because a cookery book should be an expression of a country,” he says. “I write everything longhand because I don’t like computers. It’s a real labour of love.

“For me, very good food is the original food of a country, well-cooked with the right ingredients by the right people who know how to do it.”

The 6 Seasons series appears to have matched Carluccio’s longing for a return to simplicity. “I didn’t want it just to be food for gluttony, food for voyeurs sitting in front of the television,” he says.

“Aboriginal approaches are not understood by our rotten system of organising everything in life. Their simple message is about living on this earth in balance with nature. There’s a degree of sophistication about that philosophy that is not matched in Europe.”

Best eating moments? Tail of kangaroo thrown into the hot ashes of a fire, taken out and skinned and eaten, says Carluccio. “And I did an oxtail-type stew with kangaroo, in a pot in the fire, then adding cocoa powder for a rich sauce. They really appreciated that.”

“I cooked wonderful pasta linguine with local seafood for kids playing football, and that was unbelievable. “To see little children eating with such gusto and pleasure, and then to have each one coming to me to say ‘Thank you very much’ … ” The voice trails off at the end of the phone. “Well, it was really touching and you almost never see those manners any more.”

Antonio Carluccio’s 6 Seasons premieres on Thursday at 6pm on SBS TV.