The Best of Gretta Anna with Martin Teplitzky

Foreword

Valli Little

When I arrived in Australia over thirty years ago, my first impression of the food here was pretty grim. The exotic ingredients I had been used to shopping for on a daily basis in London were few and far between, and so were good restaurants. I assumed that the most interesting food was cooked in people's homes, but even there my experiences were disappointing.

Not long after, a friend gave me a copy of the first Gretta Anna cookbook – it was honestly a revelation.

Word spread, and soon every would-be foodie was cooking from it. The recipes were so distinctive that you would know after one mouthful if it was a Gretta Anna recipe. About that time I started a catering business, and many of the recipes from the book became so popular with my clients that I couldn't take them off the menu.

I signed up for several of Gretta's cooking classes, held at her Harry Seidler-designed home in Wahroonga. The day would start with morning tea, always with a homemade cake in the garden, where you were invited to wander and view her husband David's wonderful orchid collection. The classes were fun and informative, with lots of tips and tricks, and everything so beautifully decorated. In fact, it was the first time I had seen edible flowers used to garnish both sweet and savoury dishes. Gretta truly was way ahead of her time.

Several years later I opened a gourmet food shop on Sydney's North Shore. David and Gretta became regular customers, mentoring and guiding my husband and me through the challenges of starting a new business and raising two small children at the same time. We became good friends.

I can still remember the first time we were invited to dinner at their home – Gretta served the most beautifully cooked racks of lamb, followed by sticky toffee pudding (don't forget this was the 80s, so even that dish was new for its time). The meal was perfect in its simplicity and, matched with wines from David's impressive cellar, it was a truly memorable evening. I also remember attending a special family party where Gretta had on the menu whole poached fish and char-grilled meats with Ottolenghi-style salads. For dessert, there were huge jars filled with fruits macerated in eau de vie with freshly churned ice cream and sorbet. Everything was done with such style, and of course, was utterly delicious.

Unfortunately we lost touch after I sold the shop, so I was sad when I read that Gretta had passed away. I called in to see David to offer my condolences. By this time my career path had led me to my role as Food Director with delicious. magazine, and I was keen to write a story about Gretta and her influence on Australian food. While we chatted and David shared stories and photographs of their wonderful life together, he happened to mention that their youngest son, Martin, was living and working in Italy at a beautiful villa and cooking school. I had been a regular at Martin's restaurant, Bon Cafard, in the 80s, but had never actually met him – although I felt like I knew him from the wonderful picture of Martin and Gretta in the early pages of her first book.

As fate would have it, my travels took me very close to the area of Piedmont where he was working, so I got in touch and arranged to go and shoot a story with him. After the day's shooting we sat enjoying a glass of wine, and came up with the idea of running a week-long cooking school together at the La Villa hotel in Piedmont the following year.

We have now been lucky enough to hold two of what have become known as the 'delicious weeks', where twenty guests join us for cooking classes, truffle hunts, market visits, great restaurants, and Martin and I cooking up a storm in the kitchen.

It was during our first week in Italy that Martin shared with me his plans for this new book to celebrate his mother's wonderful recipes from both her books, plus sixty new ones, all updated to meet today's demands, as well as some of his own that I knew were fantastic, having had the opportunity to cook alongside him in the kitchen.

To see the book now in print is very special. To me, a truly delicious recipe has to have a provenance, a story behind it as to what inspired it, where and how it was created and just why it works. Gretta Anna was a master at this craft, and now Martin has followed in her footsteps.

This is not just a book of recipes – it is a legacy of one of the truly great Australian food writers of our time and her son, a great chef himself, and a truly nice guy who I am proud to call a friend.

This book is a keeper. A book of its time. It will take pride of place in my kitchen and I hope that you too will have as much pleasure cooking from it as I know I will.