Restaurant entrepreneur Tony Allan and Italian chef Giorgio Locatelli bring the vivacity and humour of their 12-year friendship to a brilliant partnership in the kitchen, combining a professional passion for the best of fresh, affordable ingredients with their home lives amongst family and good friends.

Tony loves to shoot, hunt and fish. Giorgio loves to sizzle, simmer and sauté. Together they are double dynamite, exploding with outspoken opinions, original ideas and inspiring, relevant recipes that will have you cooking up a feast before you know it.

When good old British know-how gets together with Italian style and charm in the overheated confines of the kitchen, anything happen.

With Tony and Giorgio in your kitchen, you’ll never again be stuck for something to feed your kids (lasagna with meat sauce, tuna burger); something to feed your family (Spanish tortilla, penne with walnut sauce); and something to feed your friends (sea bass in salt crust, boned stuffed turbot with parmesan beans).

Not since Peter Sellers met Sophia Loren have Anglo-Italian relations been celebrated with such humour, spirit, and cultural one-upmanship. So it’s salt beef versus vitello tonnato at dawn; English fish soup versus Italian fish stew; poached wild salmon versus linguine with crab, and sherry trifle versus tiramisu.

Sheer, unadulterated joy and a passion for good, simple food shine through every page of this brilliantly original cookery book, which accompanies their blockbuster series broadcast in 2003. E11