Nicoletta

As we learned to prepare Nicoletta’s favourite Sicilian dessert, she was also intermittently checking on her husband setting the table (‘He always does this - he didn’t wait for the dishwasher to finish before taking out the cutlery’), making dinner for the evening and texting the boiler man to come and fix a problem with the heating.

It would have been the ultimate scene of everyday domesticity, were it not played out for us in a 16^th-century Sicilian palace by the Italian Duchess of Palma. ‘Unfortunately, modern duchesses don’t have time to polish their nails,’ she shrugged while shoving a tray of rosemary-seasoned potatoes in the oven, brewing us a tea and ordering her husband to, ‘just please wait for the dishwasher to finish its cycle.’