In 2014, he presented The Restaurant Man, a six-part primetime documentary for BBC Two. His second book, Spuntino: Comfort Food (New York Style), won the 2016 Guild of Food Writers award for best food and travel. Russell first book POLPO: A Venetian Cookbook (of Sorts) won the inaugural Waterstones Book of the Year prize in 2012. His second book SPUNTINO: Comfort Food, New York Style won the Guild of Food Writers Award in the Food and Travel category. He had a real sense of hospitality, as well as joy, intelligence, generosity and an eye for detail. He had a magpie tendency: he would take inspiration from restaurants in Italy, New York and London and bring them all together.” Slice the pork belly and place in the bowl with the radicchio and hazelnuts. Splash over the red wine vinegar and add a pinch of salt and pepper. Scrunch the salad together with your hands so that the dressing mixes through and the radicchio warms and wilts. Prosciutto and butternut squash with ricotta salata This stunning brand-new cookbook offers outstanding recipes from Russell Norman's acclaimed new restaurant, Trattoria Brutto, alongside an ode to one of Italy's most beloved cities, Florence, and specifically the bohemian district of Santo Spirito.

Preheat your oven to its highest setting (250C/gas mark 9 or above). At the same time put a pizza stone or baking sheet in the oven to heat up. Roll the pizza base out to around 20cm in diameter. Evenly distribute the cheeses, the onion and almost all of the thyme over the pizza base. Be sparing – a little goes a long way. If you use too much topping, the base won't be crisp enough. Around 6 minutes on a pizza stone should do for this one. Don't burn the cheese. Just before serving, grind on some pepper, sprinkle over a little olive oil and scatter over the remaining thyme leaves. Warm octopus salad He lived in Italy for a year so that, he said, he could “learn to cook like a 90-year-old Venetian granny” for his third book, Venice: Four Seasons of Home Cooking. His latest book, Brutto: a (Simple) Florentine Cookbook, was published this month. The newspaper described meeting Russell: "A macchiato-sipping, cigarette-smoking caricature of an anxious restaurateur," who "also seemed perversely thrilled, vibrating with the nervous energy of someone facing an enormous challenge.Remember that your pizza will benefit from being placed directly on to a hot baking sheet or pizza stone within a preheated oven – our pizzas take no longer than 5 minutes. At 250C/gas mark 9, yours will take about 6-8 minutes.

Toast or grill the slices of bread so that they are crunchy on the outside but still have a bit of give when squeezed. Rub one side of each slice a few times with the cut side of the garlic clove so that it melts into the bread's hot surface. Drizzle with some olive oil.

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Cut the peeled potatoes into bite-sized pieces, put into a pan of water, bring to the boil and then simmer until cooked. Be careful not to overcook – they should not disintegrate. Drain and set aside. Core the radicchio and remove all the leaves, tearing the larger ones in half. Place in a large mixing bowl. Use the warm pork fat and juices to dress the radicchio salad with the toasted and chopped hazelnuts.

However, one of the main reasons that I love Polpo is because it's a 'small plate' place, where you mix several dishes between everyone. But while I love eating out that way, it's certainly not very easy to recreate at home. I have managed to put together mezze meals before with the help of a friend or two, but it's always rather stressful. So while I'm very happy to try out a lot of the recipes in this book, I think I'll enjoy leaving the complete Polpo experience to the experts... Travel the length of the country and in almost every town, there’s a chic little trattoria or osteria that owes a debt to Norman’s vision. The accolade came just two years before Russell went on to present six-part doc The Restaurant Man on BBC Two. In 2016, his second cookbook won the Guild Food Writers Award for best food and travel book. Restaurant Magazine reports that Brutto will remain open under the custodianship of Norman's son, Ollie, and his wife, Jules.

Norman was due to eat at the River Café on Friday night with his friend the restaurateur Ruth Rogers. She said: “Russell Norman was a friend to us all in the River Café. He made London a better city for food, inspiring and encouraging a love of Italian food. We shall miss him.”

He loved seeking the offbeat place; the places frequented by the locals and in which you feel like you are escaping from the conventional worldview.” It is important that you buy your sliced prosciutto from a good Italian delicatessen. The slices should be so thin that you can almost see through them. You will also get your ricotta salata here – it's a salted, firm variation of the normally soft cheese and is perfect for grating. First you need to soften up your octopus. You do this simply by freezing it and then thawing; this breaks down the toughness in the cellular structure of the flesh. In a very large pan, simmer the octopus in unsalted water on a medium-low heat with the fennel, onion, celery and parsley stalks until tender enough to push a fork easily through the flesh. This should take no more than 1 hour. Turn the oven up to 240C/gas mark 9. Put the sliced onion into a roasting tin and place the pork belly on top, skin-side up. While the oven comes up to temperature, score the skin of the pork with a very sharp knife or a razor blade. You could use a clean Stanley knife from your toolbox. The Guardian described Russell as "a macchiato-sipping, cigarette-smoking caricature of an anxious restaurateur"Russell is survived by his partner, Dr Genevieve Verdigel, an art historian specialising in the Italian Renaissance, and three children.