Chef Carluccio believes that cooking with simple ingredients enhances the flavour of any dish

As acronyms go, this one — you will agree — has a certain something to it. “I believe in Mof Mof,” Italian restaurateur Antonio Carluccio says. And when I look at him suitably bemused, he explains. “It means a minimum of fuss, maximum of flavour.”

It’s a moonlit night, and I am sitting out on the terrace of a new restaurant in Delhi called Italia with the celebrated chef. I spear a baked asparagus with fontina and Parmesan and know what he means. It’s simple — and superb. The asparagus is crunchy, and the cheeses are nice and gooey. Chef Carluccio knows his stuff.

Anyone with any interest in Italian food will know about Carluccio. He is to Italian food what Jimi Hendrix is to the guitar. He’s written over a dozen books on food, and owns some 41 restaurants. I’ve been reading him for long years, and always go back to his books for any query that I have on Italian cuisine.

Linguine with prawns

In India to oversee some of the Italian restaurants run by The Park Group of hotels where he is a consultant (Italia is the latest in the Park stable), the man is full of anecdotes. He smokes one cigarette after another, and tells me how he gets put off by those who tend to needlessly experiment with food. Food, he reiterates, should be simply cooked with just the basic ingredients, for that’s the way to enhance its flavour.

He still remembers a dish of oyster and chocolate that he was served at a Turin restaurant. “I asked the chef, ‘Why do you want to put chocolate on oysters?’ He replied, ‘I like to shock people.’ ‘Well you have bloody well succeeded,’ I said.”

Mushroom salad

The meal in front of me underlines Carluccio’s belief — a tenet that I share. The piadine — a kind of pizza with a crisp and thin crust — topped with asparagus, artichoke, pecorino (a hard Italian cheese) and cherry tomato is out of this world. The crumb-fried lamb chops with a haricot bean salad is delicious, and I am in love with the truffle-scented potato with Parmesan.

Carluccio learnt his cooking from his mother. “I am not a chef — I am a cook,” he says. When he was growing up in Italy, he would forage for mushrooms, and pluck and eat fresh arugula leaves, growing in abundance by railway tracks, when he went to drop his father’s lunch. He remembers the hard days after World War II, and how he killed and cleaned a pet rabbit and gave it to his mother to be prepared for dinner. “I felt proud that I could help in some way,” he says.

Crumb fried lamb chops with haricot bean salad and sun-dried tomato pesto

Carluccio peppers his stories with ribald jokes and rich anecdotes. But he keeps coming back to his pet theme — that food need not be elaborate, and that the ingredients should be fresh. When a Prince asked him for a recipe, he gave him simple instructions for cooking a goat’s neck, the cheapest cut, in stock, flavoured with marjoram, and served with French beans and peas.

At the Park restaurants, he insists on using as many local ingredients as possible — even though he finds the tomatoes in India much too sour for Italian food. “I call them red lemons,” he says, and laughs. “But 95 per cent of the ingredients are local vegetables and herbs. That gives the best results.”

He has a problem with the potato though, which he finds too waxy and not floury enough for his gnocchi. But the gnocchi alla Romana that Italia Chef Arindam Jana cooks for us, with tips from Carluccio, is a simple dish of potato dumplings — and finger-licking good.

The 72-year-old Italian is now working on a TV series where he will identify a signature dish from each country, and weave stories and recipes around it. He has zeroed in on the English favourite — fish and chips — but is wondering which dish would be typically Indian. “I thought of the biryani, but I am told it came from outside. So I have been thinking of the khichri,” he says.

That will go down well with him. It’s simple — and hard to beat when it comes to taste and flavours. Mof Mof, in short.

Fillet of John Dory with creamy spinach and balsamic sauce

Ingredients (to serve four)

• 720gm John Dory fillet • 15ml lemon juice • 80gm refined and seasoned flour • 80ml olive oil • 2kg wilted spinach • 5kg chopped garlic • 80gm Beurre blanc (or white butter) • 3gm nutmeg powder • 80gm butter • 60gm galgal lemon (wedges) • 120ml balsamic honey dressing

Method

Marinate the fish with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Dust with flour. Heat olive oil in a non-stick pan, and sear the fish. Transfer the fish to a baking tray and bake for five minutes at 150°C. Meanwhile, heat the wilted spinach. Add garlic, beurre blanc, nutmeg powder, salt and pepper. Serve the fish with creamy spinach, caramelised lemon wedges, a dill sprig and honey balsamic sauce.

Baked asparagus with fontina and Parmesan crust

Ingredients (to serve four)

• 360gm asparagus (peeled and blanched) • 60gm fontina slices • 40gm grated Parmesan • 20gm sun-dried tomatoes •5gm basil leaves • Salt, to taste ½ tsp crushed black pepper • 10ml olive oil • 5ml balsamic vinegar •3gm castor sugar

Method

Marinate tomatoes with basil, salt, sugar, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Sauté the asparagus in olive oil with basil, salt and pepper. Arrange the spears on a plate. Cover the bottom half with slices of fontina and grated Parmesan cheese. Gratinate until golden. Garnish with the marinated sun-dried tomatoes.