Look who's cooking

A nuclear engineer by training, an Italian expat turns a new ravioli in the kitchen, Tracie Barrett discovers.

One might expect a nuclear engineer with a love of cooking to focus on the science-heavy techniques known as molecular gastronomy, but Filippo Fiori's passion is for the traditional cuisine of his native Italy.

Fiori, 30, was born in the small town of Lari in the countryside between Pisa and Florence in the Tuscany region, with a population of about 1,000 people. He has always been interested in food - perhaps, he says, because his father often spoke of having been a cook in the army - and started working in restaurants at the age of 16.