Personal Project: Gino D’Acampo’s Italian Family Adventure Recipes (2024)

For this project I prepared, styled and photographed four recipes from Gino D'Acampo's cookbook, Italian Family Adventures.

I've always been a fan of Gino - both his crazy personality and his recipes! I had the pleasure of meeting him in 2021 at a PR event for his food company,Bonta Italia. It was a great afternoon spent cooking fresh pizza and tasting some of their new products. This event is actually where I was given a copy of this cookbook and I've really enjoyed many of the recipes inside!

That's why I decided to use it for one of my monthly personal projects, where I'm shooting recipes from my favourite cookbooks. I chose this book in March because I wanted to create more spring and summer vibes, and I felt that Italian dishes would be the perfect fit.

Super Green Soup from Gino D'Acampo's Italian Family Adventure Cookbook

I started with the Super Green Soup. The colour of the soup was lush and vibrant thanks to the leeks, broccoli, spinach and courgette, so I wanted to make the most of that and keep the rest of the props quite neutral.

My idea was to create an al fresco dining scenario, so I chose natural materials for the dishes and bowls, such as wood and stone, to fit with that.

I styled the soup quite simply, with freshly ground pepper and watercress. For another, I replaced the watercress for a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, which worked really nicely when shooting with side-backlight.

I had some pink and white spring flowers, which I used for the flatlay image to create some depth. The pink napkin balanced the flowers nicely and creates a soft complementary colour palette.

All these soup images were taken with natural light, fairly close to the window to get a bright feel, but still enough contrast to add interest and depth.

Frozen Berry Ice Cream from Gino D'Acampo's Italian Family Adventure Cookbook

Next up, I made Frozen Berry Ice Cream. I've photographed ice cream once before and wasn't happy with the result, so I knew this would be challenging!

It was a dark day, but I wanted a spring-like look so I set up a strobe flash to capture some brighter images. I had some trouble with the settings at one point and struggled to achieve what I wanted, so the shadows under the little bowl in the photo above, left aren't quite right!

The colour palette was meant to be triadic with pink, yellow and green, which I feel was achieved in the image above left.

I prepared the composition first, then added the ice cream when I was ready to prevent it from melting whilst positioning the elements in the scene.

I think I should have waited for the ice cream to soften a little more though, because I wasn't able to create nice round scoops as I had intended.

Clearly I need more practice with ice cream as a subject!

Chocolate Hazelnut Martini from Gino D'Acampo's Italian Family Adventure Cookbook

I'd had my eye on this chocolate hazelnut martini for a really long time and decided this would be the perfect time to make it so I could enjoy it afterwards!

Again, I used artificial light for this shoot and didn't use any diffusion in order to create a hard sunlight effect. I wanted long shadows to feel like it could be evening time, when you might enjoy such a co*cktail.

I chose a monochrome colour palette to enhance the decadent chocolate drink.

For some texture I finely grated dark chocolate on top of the liquid and added sponge fingers because of their sparkly sugar coated top.

I love how the light casts shadows through the details of the glass onto the top of the co*cktail, adding a lot of natural interest to the shot. It didn't need much more styling in my opinion, so I left this as a very minimal scene.

Neapolitan Pasta with Meat Sauce from Gino D'Acampo's Italian Family Adventure Cookbook

Finally, I made the Neapolitan pasta with meat sauce, which was absolutely delicious!

I wanted to include a human element in these shots, so played around with different positions of my hands holding the bowl and wine glass, as well as sprinkling cheese over the pasta and placing the bowl down as if just arriving to the table.

To create a story, I added a pinch bowl with salt, a glass of wine and the book open to the page showing the recipe.

Authentic Italian food at home without a cookbook

As much as I love cooking, there are days when I'd rather spend just a few minutes preparing a meal - but I don't want to compromise on quality or taste.

For those days when I crave pasta,La Tua Pasta is a fantastic alternative.

La Tua Pasta specialises in making traditional fresh, Italian pasta which is delivered to your door, and is cooked in just 4-5 minutes. They offer a wide variety of pasta dishes that can come ready with flavoured butters or sauces, as well as a generous serving of parmesan cheese to sprinkle over the top.

I tried their pumpkin and sage ravionini, which are basically giant, round ravioli with a delicious filling. I paired them with lemon and sage butter and, of course, grated parmesan.

I am a dessert person and love to have something sweet after dinner, so I was delighted to discover that La Tua Pasta also offer bombolonis, which are little filled donuts.

Flavours for the filling include chocolate, pistachio, Speculoos (which massively appeals to the Belgian in me!) and Argentinian caramel - perfect for my partner who is from Argentina and loves anything related to dulce de leche. Needless to say, these are a big hit in my household!

So, if you're looking for deliciously authentic Italian food at home but don't want the hassle of cooking, then I highly recommend ordering fromLa Tua Pasta - you won't be disappointed!

Special Thanks

Thank you to the team atGarofalo Pasta for collaborating with me on this project and providing me with their rigatoni pasta shapes for the Neapolitan pasta recipe!

I took the opportunity to shoot some product images - it's always good to practice with shiny, plastic packaging.

Thank youtoFarmhouse Pottery for their beautiful ceramics, which I used in all the shoots for this project. You'll see their mini maple bowls, silo ramekins and petite bowls, a small olive oil bottle and a vase.

And finally, thank you toLa Tua Pasta for sending me their pumpkin and sage raviolini and selection of bomboloni to taste and photograph.