Victoria Cosford’s Amore and Amaretti is a food-lover’s delight: a romance, an escape and a tribute to Italian cooking all in one.

Here, she describes old widower Annunzio, with whom she had to share a flat at Portoferraio while they were both working at the same restaurant. At first she is daunted by the old man, but soon she finds comfort in his gentleness and eccentricity, not to mention his baked stuff sardines …

Annunzio soaks his underwear in Omino Bianco bleach; returning to our apartment, I see the line of large, blindingly white square underpants and billowing singlets which marks his bedroom window. Each evening before work, he and I pause briefly for a spumantino at the same bar.

At night after Annunzio and I have scrubbed the kitchen down, we set up a small table and two chairs out the back of the kitchen and have our dinners. I only ever eat two things, which I alternate: char-grilled swordfish with Annunzio’s lemon-olive oil emulsion drizzled over the top, or bulgy buffalo mozzarella sliced with ovals of sweet San Marzano tomatoes and spicy basil. This too is Annunzio’s favourite meal, the tomatoes at their peak of ripeness, their glossy egg shapes sliced vertically and arranged over the cheese.

All Annunzio’s movements are ponderous. He rotates his thick fingers slowly over the plate, salt and pepper scattering. The basil leaves, the new green olive oil, and then the slow messy business of eating – teeth clicking, oil spraying, bread sopping up the juices and gumming his conversation. We both eat too much bread and drink too much wine, and then wander, two unlikely friends, down to Bar Roma at the water’s edge to sit watching the boats. Annunzio tells me stories from his life over his baby whisky; I spoon pistachio-green gelato into my mouth from a silver dish and feel safe and very young.

Annunzio’s stories all follow the same pattern: past restaurants he has owned or managed, which failed, leaving him jobless, defeated, disillusioned and desperately poor. People he had trusted who had turned their backs; countries he had lived in, whose languages he had learned, which had finally disenchanted  him. The woman he should have married and whom he still loves instead of the sick woman who was his wife. His huge yellow teeth seem to bite something – perhaps the air – as he speaks. The clicking boats with lives of their own, their rhythmic nodding, canvas clapping, are like some massive beast slumbering restlessly. That he can make me feel like this – sweet somehow, and pure, and uncorrupted – is one of the best reasons for loving him.

Annunzio’s blunt fingers press mixture into splayed sardines. L’impasto consists of bread soaked in milk, finely chopped parsley and garlic, ground mortadella, grated parmesan, sultanas and pine nuts. He shows me how to pinch up the sides of the sardines and place them in neat rows in a baking tray, slipping a bay leaf in between each. Then he splashes white wine over the top and bakes them for about fifteen minutes.

Sarde al Beccafico

(Baked stuffed sardines)

2 slices day-old rustic bread
Milk
2 tablespoons sultanas
2 tablespoons pine nuts
80–100 grams mortadella, as finely chopped as possible
2 tablespoons grana or parmesan, freshly grated
Grated rind 1 lemon
2 fat cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2/3 bunch parsley, finely chopped
Salt and pepper
750 grams fresh sardines, filleted and butterflied
Bay leaves
White wine
Olive oil

Preheat oven to 200 °C. Soak bread in milk briefly, then squeeze dry. Place in a bowl together with sultanas, pine nuts, mortadella, cheese, lemon rind, garlic and parsley, season with salt and pepper and combine well. Place about a teaspoon of mixture in the middle of each sardine and arrange on baking tray with a bay leaf between each. Sprinkle wine over the top and drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes. Serve as part of an antipasto.