Soffritto

A love story, a war adventure, a family saga, a travel memoir - Soffritto is also a guide to an undiscovered part of Italy.Every Italian cook has a soffritto - the 'starter kit' of olive oil, herbs, garlic and other core ingredients from which a great dish is built. Lucio Galletto was in search of the soffritto of his life.In 1938, 16-year-old Anna Galletto ran away with Gino Guelfi, the charming gelato maker she'd met at a local dance. In 1943, Anna's brother Mauro escaped from a German prison camp and hunted fascists in the marble mountains of Carrara. In 1951, Mauro and Gino built a shack on a beach next to the ruins of a 2000-year-old Roman city. They started selling fish soup to the artists and writers who were holidaying in the area and became legendary for the way they used the local specialties: parmesan, pecorino, olive oil, pasta, pesto, balsamic vinegar, truffles and prosciutto. In 1975, Mauro's son Lucio arrived for work at the restaurant, fell in love with a beautiful girl sitting in the bar, and ran away with her to Australia.In a new century, Lucio returns to his birthplace - Lunigiana, in north west Italy - on a mission to understand the family, the food and the culture that prepared him to create a successful restaurant in a new world 17,000 kilometres away. Farmers, fishermen, war heroes, winemakers, waiters, hunters, cooks, cousins, aunts, shepherds and scholars told him their secrets and inspired this story, told beautifully by David Dale.