Food Safari

They say at the heart of all Italian food is absolute simplicity.

The best produce in season, home-grown or bought that day,

cooked with love and passion.

Welcome to Italian Food Safari.

On this safari, black ink pasta...

a recipe that uses dried salt cod,

pork and fennel sausages,

the secrets of a perfect risotto

and the food of the angels, crostoli.

CLASSICAL GUITAR MUSIC

When Italian fishermen came to Australia,

they brought skills that were fundamental

in opening up many key fishing areas right around our coastline.

On the western coast, it was the Sicilians

who put the port of Fremantle on the map.

Claude Basile's grandfather, Calogero,

was one of the first to come, in 1905.

Most of the Italian fishermen come from a couple of towns,

Capo d'Orlando and Sant'Angelo di Brolo

and they were the first fishermen in Western Australia.

And they were largely Sicilians that came, weren't they?

Yeah, largely Sicilians and they used to fish out of Safety Bay

and virtually catch the wind with the little sailing boats and...

Much smaller than this, eh? Oh, most definitely.

They would be as small as Jim's boat over there, you know,

and they were pretty hard in those days.

Claude and a number of the descendants

of the early fishing fleet

raised enough money to erect a monument to them

in the middle of the harbour.

To... sort of say thank you to our forefathers

for what they did for Fremantle, all the fishing industry.

One of the other legacies are some of the fishermen's own recipes

using cuttlefish and squid.

The most famous is what Claude calls "black spaghetti"

which he learned to cook as a young deckhand.

Black spaghetti originated in the town where I was born,

Capo d'Orlando, in Sicily, and it's a great delicacy there,

so my mum taught me and I love cooking it.

It's revolting to look at but it's absolutely fantastic to eat.

Cos it's dark black, isn't it? Your teeth go black but it's great.

It's absolutely fantastic.

CLASSICAL GUITAR MUSIC

It all starts with the ink sacs,

which are carefully removed and set aside.

In a large pot, Claude heats olive oil and adds diced onion...

Chuck it in there like that. ..then chilli and chopped garlic.

So, the garlic.

He adds some pepper and salt... Beautiful.

Pass us the sauce, please.

..and a large bottle of home-made tomato passata.

So before that comes to the boil we have to put the ink bags in.

Oh, look at that colour.

Beautiful. See that? Look at this.

Beautiful, you know.

This is the cuttlefish that we took the ink out of.

Those are quite small little cuttlefish, aren't they?

Well, they are. The smaller, the sweeter, Claude?

Correct. Even the ink of these ones is better than the bigger ones.

We'll put a little bit of crushed pepper.

That flavour goes through it. Oh, yeah.

So what we do...

Now see that, that's ready now. That's beautiful.

What we do with this, we transfer it to there.

And that then absorbs all that beautiful black.

Yeah. Mmmm.

Now, it's about 10 minutes.

Claude drains a large vat of spaghetti

and mixes it with the rich black sauce.

Oh, che bellezza!

Oh, look at that.

Mmmm...

We need to put some cheese.

Buon appetito. Grazie.

You're right, the black is, um, like, confronting.

It's confronting, but it, you know,

it's all a matter how much you put in, you know.

Normally, I would put a bit more black, but...

Mmmm...

That's magic. It's beautiful.

Rich and mellow, and it's got a little hint of that chilli.

Yeah. Beautiful.

UPBEAT MODERN MUSIC

Much of the delicious heritage of Italy has been appreciated

by a wider audience through pioneering restaurateurs

who introduced their non-Italian customers to many new tastes.

One of the veterans who did so much to educate his customers

is Beppi Polese, who started his restaurant

in East Sydney in the late 1950s.

Italian fishermen used to bring the catch of the night,

fresh fish and so on and I used to cook it

and introduce it as what it was.

They refused everything - calamari, especially, octopus...

What would they say?

They'd say no, no, no,

we use these to go fishing, as bait.

You know, that's something, I said to myself, okay,

I'll cook everything in a sauce and I won't tell them what it was,

and they loved it and then I tell them what it was.

And it was okay? Fantastic.

But it took me about 10 years to introduce the type of food

that I knew when I came to Australia.

Beppi has now turned his attention

to showing the delights of the dried salt cod called baccala.

CLASSICAL GUITAR MUSIC

The baccala is soaked in cold water until it's plump again

and boiled to soften the skin which easily peels away.

Beppi removes any bones

and pops the fish into a mixer which shreds it perfectly.

Faster.

For depth of flavour, he adds chopped anchovies,

dried chilli flakes,

some crushed garlic,

chopped chives,

finely chopped celery leaves...

Ah, that's one of your favourites.

..and parsley.

Here is very important to mix it dry before you add the oil.

Got it. Very, very important.

Beppi then slowly pours in olive oil.

'Mantecato' it means "combine". Is like mayonnaise, you know?

It is, yeah.

When the mixture is thick and creamy he adds a little stock

made from the bones and skin of the fish.

The mantecato is finished with some lemon juice to add a fresh sharpness.

Okay. Let's try.

Thank you for introducing us to this.

Mmmm...

That's a beautiful flavour. Let me, maybe, excuse me.

Just a tiny bit of chilli.

Ah, a little bit of chilli, I tell you what, that's marvellous.

Yeah, yeah. It is delicious. It's wonderful.

Okay? Grazie.

Thank you. It is a pleasure. A little kiss.

That is the best of the lot! You're very kind. Thank you.

CLASSICAL GUITAR MUSIC

They say you can tell a good Italian butcher

by the quality of his pork and fennel sausages,

one of the staples of the kitchen used by themselves

or as an ingredient in many dishes.

Roger Ongarato runs the butcher shop set up by his father

in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy.

His popular pork and fennel sausages are from a treasured recipe

handed down to him from his dad.

So, Roger, the secret to good sausages?

Well, it all starts with the pig.

The best pigs have a lot of fat.

And they've got good colour, the meat's a good colour

and at the end of the day, we always prefer to have females.

So, they're sweet tasting. Nice and sweet.

What sort of pork do you like to use? Any particular preference?

Well, predominantly, we like to use the Berkshire pork

because it has a higher fat content.

It's a slower-growing animal, so its moisture content is much lower.

And that's one of the main things.

You don't want sausages to be bangers... Oh, no, no.

When you put them on the barbecue or in a frypan, they burst.

They're an old English breed of pig?

They're a rare... Also known as the black pig?

That's right. They're a rare breed. All right, that's great.

So today, you're going to make some pork and fennel seed sausages.

A traditional Italian-style sausage. Exactly right.

And the sausages from the Veneto where you're from,

they're quite big, they like making their sausages up there.

Exactly right, yeah.

All right, so here's your pork,

now talk to me about the cut of the animal that you use.

What do you prefer using? I prefer to use the shoulder

because you've basically got a good measure of fat and lean meat.

Just once through the mincer? Just once. Yeah.

You don't want to get it too mushed.

No, we want it still to remain real rough and rustic.

Firstly, we just put it in our mixer.

Now we end up putting in our spices.

There's pepper, salt, nutmeg and other related spices and...

Hang on, hang on. You're not getting away with it that easily, Roger.

You can't just do the other related spices.

We want the secret here. What goes in there?

Colonel Sanders never gave up Kentucky's um...

Kentucky's recipe, and neither will I.

This is a recipe we've had for at least um, 40 years.

It's a family tradition? Generational thing?

My father was a butcher in Italy and this came with him.

Delightful. So they smell good, they smell fantastic.

So we end up putting that all in the mixer.

And then, we put in... Put in vino bianco.

Yeah, put in some white wine.

Now this has got to mix to become almost like a dough. Exactly right.

So you get that emulsifying action happening with the fat.

And when you cook the sausage, it actually stays together.

Binds together. Binds together. It won't fall apart.

Ready? She's looking good.

Okay.

As you can see, it's already started to bind really well.

Yeah, that's all beautifully bound, stuck together.

And before we put it into a sausage, we've got to do the ultimate.

You're going to eat it? We must taste it. Definitely.

All right.

What do you think? Ready to go? Spot on. She's spot on.

Let me just make sure there.