About Vicky Bennison

Photos of me by Franco Origlia

I’d been living in a 2 bed flat at the wrong end of a very long high street way out in the west of London for about 20 years, and having a kitchen that measured 2m by 1.8m, tucked under the eaves in an Edwardian conversion was starting to get to me. I might have written 3 books, but was I ever going to be grown up enough to own a house where I didn’t need to crouch over the cooker? The trouble was, as a single person with an erratic income, I couldn’t afford a house with a decent kitchen anywhere in London – or the Home Counties for that matter. I figured it was just as expensive to get from Manchester to London as it was from Seville or Bologna, so started to look abroad.

Mallorca was an obvious place to start, I love the island having written about it. But the estate agents turned me away: I didn’t have a big enough budget for them to bother about me. Mainland Spain was just too big: it’s either really, really rural, flies round donkey’s ears kind of busy, or it’s the Costas, or big cities. None of which appealed. So I ended up looking in Italy, where cultural life still happens at a local level. Yes, there’s opera; but I also like it when, for example, the Cingoli cinema screened the film on Merlot, they also held a wine tasting. That’s my kind of town.

Le Marche is the calf of Italy’s boot. I knew it thanks to my parents ‘drive don’t fly’ holidaying habits. And to cut a long story short, in 2005 I sold the flat and bought a 1970s schoolhouse with lurid orange pine panelling, a big damp problem and fabulous views. I had an idea that I’d research the region’s food and wine for a book.

Things didn’t go according to plan for the best of reasons: I met up with my childhood sweetheart thanks to a screen test for a cookery show. Billy (that’s his name) is a TV producer and we’d been vaguely in touch after I invited him to the book launch of my Andalucia book; one should always let one’s ex’s know how successful and glamorous one has become. He couldn’t make it, but invited me to dinner and 8 months later I decided to trade the meal for practise in front of a camera. Nothing came of the guest appearance but we are now married.

The house renovations took double the time though everything is now finished except the court cases (arrgh, a book in itself) and I divide my time between Le Marche and London. Billy meanwhile is an enthusiastic diner and imbiber, making only occasional forays into the kitchen. He’s very good at making pancakes.

So research for a book has been moving along at a pre global warming glacial pace. I’ve written another one in the meantime – see Seasonal Spanish Cooking elsewhere on the site. My blog, meanwhile, has had an equally stuttering start (okay, a 2 year gap); the loose idea behind it is to share all the behind the scenes stuff that happens when attempting to write food books: the dramas, the disasters, the distractions (lots of them), the adventures, the food – and the fun of it all.