Amanda Tabberer looks uncannily like her famous mother, Maggie. Her hair is scraped back, her eyebrows are luxurious and defined, and her eyes are as blue as the seas off the Amalfi Coast where she lived for 18 years in the town of Positano.
In 2008, Tabberer produced her first book about falling in love with this seductive stretch of Italian coastline that runs from Vietri to Positano. My Amalfi Coast was a highly praised and highly personal travel guide that couldn't fit all she knew about the food of the area. So she saved her recipes for her just-released second book, Amalfi Coast Recipes, a picture-perfect showcase of the region's wonderful produce and endearing personalities, who happen to be her friends.
Warm and unaffected, Tabberer is known for preferring flat shoes to stilettos and still making it onto best-dressed lists. On her left hand is a magnificent cameo carved out of volcanic rock from Mount Vesuvius, a day trip away from Positano.
Tabberer first visited the pretty hill-top village in 1985 when she was living in Florence and working for the Enrico Coveri fashion house, and went south for a summer holiday in a ''bambino'' Fiat with a gang of gay friends.
''It was like, oh my god,'' she says. ''You come around that bend and you see it all in front of you and it's so spectacular, I was absolutely flabbergasted. It's tiny and white and all cobblestones and perfect and the people are warm and the food is wonderful and the sea is clean and blue.''
The first few days weren't wonderful, she recalls. ''It was rough water and windy, we didn't like the pebbles on the beach, we were bitching and blueing about everything. We were told about this restaurant at Laurito, Da Adolfo, and that you can only get there by boat so you go down to the main beach and look for the boat with the red fish and you'll recognise it because the hottest-looking guy drives the boat. So he ends up being my partner for 20 years.''
Tabberer moved to Positano and lived with Sergio Bella in a garage. Bella, whose father, Adolfo, started Da Adolfo in 1966, now owns the restaurant. For a couple of years, Tabberer worked as a waitress there until the intensity of seasonal work and partying got to her.
She began screen-printing T-shirts, ran a shop and made a range of linen clothing. She also started a business organising weddings, and villas, apartments and hotels for visitors.
Tabberer's four years working at her mother's public relations agency before she left Australia in 1983 taught her to be disciplined and organised. ''She was a good boss. I learnt a lot,'' she says. Tabberer also drew on her fashion experience working for Conde Nast's French Vogue in Paris and Vogue Australia in Sydney.
Born in Adelaide, Tabberer grew up in Sydney's eastern suburbs where her mother moved in the 1960s to continue her modelling career. Amanda had followed her older sister, Brooke, a public relations consultant, to Woollahra Public School and then into Dover Heights Girls High School.
''It was known as the brothel on the hill,'' says Tabberer, her voice throatier than usual with laughter. ''I loved it. We all used to wear our uniforms hitched up and we'd smoke cigarettes in the back of the bus and would wag school. Nothing like Ascham or Kambala.
''It was my dream to go to one of those schools because I was not a bad student but Maggie had a different attitude towards schooling in those days. But I learnt a lot. I became very streetwise.''
She also became restaurant-savvy from spending after-school hours in her step-father's restaurant, Buonasera, nibbling on fried oysters and squid. Ettore Prossimo, whom Tabberer called Uncle Reb, was introduced to her mother by the photographer Helmut Newton and, Amanda says, ''It was love at first sight - mine and his, not just Maggie's and his.''
There was a cruise to Italy as a 12-year-old but no particular yearning to go there. Instead, she studied Arts at the University of NSW before becoming unwell and quitting after a year. Her first trip to Paris while she was at Vogue Australia was the catalyst for more than 20 years of living abroad.
''I've never done the travel thing. I always wanted to live in a country, learn the language and hopefully get a job and that happened,'' she says. Nor was she ever homesick. ''I love Australia but I have to confess, I've always been happy to know I'll come back for a holiday. I didn't have to come back and live.''
That changed when she separated from Bella and came back to Sydney in 2003 with their son, Marco, now 21. That's when she found out she could cook.
''I cook with instinct because I watched them [the chefs and home cooks in her book] do it for so many years and I learnt off them,'' she says.
''I do a good pasta with zucchini [see recipe, right] and a really good one is not that easy to do. It's got to be very al dente and you've got to toss it in the pan so the last bit of cooking happens.''
Writing Amalfi Coast Recipes and revisiting Positano's restaurants and friends like Margherita, the traffic warden whose spaghetti al forno is in the book, was cathartic for Tabberer.
She hasn't parted ways with Positano completely. A food tour is planned for next year and her business organising events and accommodation on the Amalfi Coast is booming. ''I don't think you can market an area like the Amalfi Coast but that's basically what I've done,'' she says. ''My books, my food safaris, my website are all about the Amalfi Coast.''
Amalfi Coast Recipes by Amanda Tabberer, Lantern, $49.99.
Zucchini spaghetti by Rosetta D'Urso
Originally seen in the area of Nerano many decades ago, this dish has been interpreted by every cook on the coastline, including some of the best restaurants. But Rosetta's recipe stands out. Her trick? I believe it's the two different ways she prepares the zucchini before bringing them together, and her ample quantity of basil. Be generous: zucchini and basil are a match made in heaven.
500ml peanut oil
2kg zucchini, cut into 5mm thick rounds
30g butter
11/2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 small onion, chopped
1 heaped tbsp salt
30 young and tender basil leaves
200ml thickened cream
100g parmesan, grated
500g spaghetti
1. Heat the peanut oil in a large, deep frying pan over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. Add half the zucchini and cook until golden. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain in a colander.
2. Combine the butter and olive oil in a large saucepan over low heat until the butter has melted. Add the onion and cook until transparent. Add the remaining zucchini, the salt and 125 millilitres water and cook gently for about 20 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, then stir in the fried zucchini and set aside.
3. Roughly tear 10 basil leaves and combine in a large bowl with the cream and parmesan. Stir in the zucchini mixture.
4. Cook the spaghetti in boiling salted water for seven to eight minutes. Keep an eye on it as you want to remove it two minutes before it is ready. Drain, reserving a cup of the cooking water for the sauce. This is very important as the zucchini paste can be dry.
5. Add the pasta and a little pasta water to the zucchini paste and toss until well mixed.
OR, using a pasta fork, you can fish the pasta out of the hot water directly into the bowl with the zucchini, which will automatically take some liquid with it, then toss everything together.
6. Divide the pasta among serving bowls and garnish with the remaining basil leaves. Eat immediately.
Serves 6
