Antonio Carluccio

Antiques experts accompany celebrities on a road trip around the UK searching for treasures and competing to make the most money at auction

Antonio Carluccio, the godfather of Italian gastronomy, travels through Southern Italy sampling and cooking the region's specialities. His tour takes him from Sardinia to Sicily and from Campania to Calabria, with visits to Rome, Puglia and Basilicata. Among the treats in store are an impromptu barbecue in a vineyard, a shepherd's feast in the Barbagia Mountains, a Neapolitan pizza-making class, a moonlit octopus-fishing trip and a San Lorenzo's night grill for ten men called Lorenzo.

Two Greedy Italians is a BBC television series that first aired on BBC Two in the UK on May 4, 2011. The series sees the chefs Gennaro Contaldo and Antonio Carluccio travelling around Italy to see how society and food has evolved over the years. It was produced by Nicola Gooch. An accompanying cookery book was produced for the series. A second series was broadcast in April and May 2012. The series has also been sold and broadcast internationally, including on the Australian channels ABC and SBS, and the Swedish broadcaster SVT.

Anna Del Conte is The Cook Who Changed Our Lives and the instrumental force in leading Britain beyond the land of spaghetti bolognese and tinned ravioli. Featuring and narrated by Nigella Lawson, Anna’s most ardent advocate, and starring a cast of familiar faces including: Giorgio Locatelli, Antonio Carluccio, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Prue Leith and Tom Parker Bowles, this film reveals how a Milanese cook, now 91, changed Britain’s attitude to Italian food at a time when we could only buy olive oil in Soho or the chemist. Infused with cherished recipes, revealing archive and personal testimony, The Cook Who Changed Our Lives time travels through Britain’s social history to reveal how we experienced and enjoyed our first taste of Italian food.

Bartolomeo Scappi (c. 1500-1577) was arguably the most famous chef of the Italian Renaissance. As head chef for popes and cardinals throughout the middle decades of the sixteenth century, he prepared unashamedly decadent banquets for the most powerful men on earth. At the culmination of his prolific career he compiled the largest cookery treatise of the period to instruct an apprentice on the full craft of fine cuisine, its methods, ingredients, and recipes. Chef Antonio Carluccio goes to his beloved Italy with a Renaissance cookbook for a guide. He follows the trail of its author to discover more about a man who had an extraordinary career cooking for the cardinals, emperors and popes of the sixteenth century. Antonio resurrects 500 year old recipes, cooking eel in Venice, porcini mushrooms in Lombardy, and stuffing a suckling pig in Rome. He ends his journey with a banquet fit for a pope. Lush scenery and mouth-watering ingredients create a visually stunning feast.