Leo is known for lovingly recreating authentic dishes that are big on flavour and warmth. Favouring iconic dishes from his Italian, Polish and Argentinian roots, he’s the king of his kitchen, luring in his two sons to help grate, boil and prep comfort food for family mealtime.

There’s a calmness and coolness to this household. The two boys are so inquisitive and at ease, feeling their way through the method of making home-style gnocchi (the killer pasta dish Leo’s provided). I’ve already cooked his recipe twice since visiting his home, and my son requested three bowls on the first try. Three. Bowls.

Name: Leo Moscicki
Occupation: Co-owner of Radical Yes
Location: West Melbourne
Family members: Leo, Kerryn, Maximilian (11 yo), Oslo (6 yo).

We are a family of four who live in an apartment in the city. We value kindness and family time and we love being surrounded by books, music, talking and, most central to our every day life, gathering around the table for food.

Our main mealtime rule is eating together at the table. No books or screens allowed. Every meal also starts with expressing what we are grateful for in life or just for the coming day. Each person takes it in turn. Oslo is in charge of keeping track who’s turn it is at each meal.

Kerryn and I run our own business called Radical Yes. We make flat shoes for women. The business is seven years old and consists of an online store and a retail space in North Melbourne. In some ways we see our business as a kind of life practice that gives us an opportunity to keep learning, growing and experimenting all the time with being self-directed and living a free-willed independent existence. Kerryn would say we see it as a blessing because it allows us to spend as much time as possible with our boys.

We are extremely lucky to live right next door to Queen Victoria Market. We don’t do all of our shopping there anymore (shout outs to Aldi, Mediterranean Wholesalers and La Manna Fresh) but the kids are always involved in the shopping. Max will now also take a calculator to make sure we stay on budget and he also loves splitting the shopping list in half and going off to find half the items. Oslo mostly comes along for the trolley rides and to see how many times he can try and sneak Coco Pops, Milo and Chupa Chups into the trolley without me noticing.

I’ve always enjoyed cooking because it was a big part of my life growing up. My dad is Italian/Polish and my mum is from Argentina. We had a great variety of food to choose from at home and my dad has always been a good cook. Mum hates cooking but is pretty good at it too and as kids we were always encouraged to help out in the kitchen.

An Argentine BBQ is a pretty big deal. It takes half a day of preparation and slow cooking over coals. These were common during summer holidays. In winter dad would pull out the Polish classics from his dad like Bigos (Hunter’s Stew with various smoked meats), Borscht (beetroot soup with sour cream) and Pierogi (potato and ricotta-filled dumplings). All recipes were quite intensive but the flavours always blew us away because they were different from the daily staples. I’d love to pass down to my kids, the love and importance of food preparation but also the unique aspects of different foods and how they relate to each culture.

My cooking skills have developed from being just self-sufficient to actually enjoying the process. Kerryn dislikes cooking and has at times been banned from the kitchen but she has a few specialties like preparing salad dressings or making scrambled eggs. She takes care of business finance, I take care of the meals, so it works out perfectly.

I’ve become much more interested in cooking because I now have a bigger and more demanding audience. Mostly I had to learn to simplify recipes and make smaller portions. I learnt to prepare food for at least half an hour before they are hangry. I learnt to become one with the practice of constantly wiping food off tables and walls and most of all I developed an extra-sensory skill in predicting spills. After a while, you can see a spilled cup or bowl coming from a mile away. It’s still hard to catch them though.

Max has a peanut allergy so any trace of peanuts has been removed from our house. Peanut butter and Picnic bars are a distant memory. But almond butter is a great alternative. Max has a very refined palate for a kid. He loves caviar, anchovies, olives, capers, smoked fish, oysters (I’m not even joking – we call him ‘The Polish Aristocrat’). Oslo loves pasta and sandwiches and can sometimes refuse eating anything else, so a small pot of pasta is often boiling away on the side.

Most dog-eared cookbook pre and post parenthood: It changes all the time and we go to the library a lot, but as far as ones we own, pre-parenthood: Toby Puttock’s Daily Italian and post-parenthood: Sarah Wilson’s I Quit Sugar.

Time-saving tip or food hack: Get in the car and drive to Lygon Street (this is actually Kerryn’s go-to). And the best way to keep my kids occupied while I’m trying to prepare dinner is giving them simple tasks like mixing, measuring and sorting ingredients. That will keep them interested but out of the way of anything tricky or dangerous.

Favourite local kid-friendly restaurants: D.O.C Pizza in Carlton. Not specifically designed to be kid-friendly and I’m not sure if they love having kids there, but the waiters are so good with kids (they will never put a wine glass or anything hot right in front of them), they are quick and the food is great. Always followed by a trip to Pidapipo Ice Cream.

Special mention for Supernormal which is clearly not kid-friendly but is on our family rotation for really special nights – birthdays and end of school celebrations – we love hitting these guys up for Lobster Rolls then heading downstairs for Street Fighter competitions. The staff are always fantastic with the kids, despite us possibly not being their core customer.

Gnocchi with Secret Vegetables Sugo

Growing up, I remember the most fun and kid-friendly family recipes were the Italian pasta dishes. Rolling and cutting dough for pasta and gnocchi were always something we were allowed to help with. I also remember having to carefully help dad lay the pasta dough out on the bed on a tablecloth to let it dry. I haven’t achieved this level of Zen mastery yet.

This hand made gnocchi is such an easy pasta recipe and the results far out-weigh the efforts. It’s also one of the most kid-friendly recipes for encouraging participation because kids love rolling out the dough and cutting the gnocchi. It also teaches them about process and timing and how to be careful and respectful of boiling water!

For the gnocchi:

A large handful of rock salt
500g potatoes (you can ask your greengrocer for high starch mashing potatoes)
2 free-range egg yolks
A handful of freshly grated parmesan cheese, plus extra to serve
1 to 2 cups of plain flour.

For the Sugo (sauce):

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion
1 medium carrot
Half a red capsicum
2 sticks celery
3 to 4 medium mushrooms
1 or 2 tins of peeled Roma or chopped tomatoes*

*Use 1 tin for a thicker sauce or 2 tins for a more ‘tomato-ey’ sauce.

Preheat oven to 220 degrees C. Spread the handful of rock salt onto a baking dish to make a ‘bed’ of salt for the potatoes to sit on. The salt will draw out the moisture from the potatoes and leave the starch to help make your dough firmer. Oven bake the potatoes for 60 minutes until soft inside when poked with a fork or skewer. If you don’t have rock salt or don’t have an extra hour to spare, potatoes can just be boiled in this part of the process.

While potatoes are cooking, make your Sugo. This sauce should just look like a plain tomato pasta sauce but I like to hide vegetables in it. Warm a saucepan or deep frypan over medium heat. Finely chop your onion, capsicum, celery and mushroom and grate your carrot.

Add onion and celery to your warm pan, add a sprinkle of salt and cover. Let it sweat and start to soften. Once the onion is translucent add capsicum and grated carrot and let this sweat and start to soften and caramelise too. Keep the heat medium to low, to avoid burning. The longer you let this caramelise the better.

Remove from heat and let it cool a few minutes before adding it all to a food processor. Process into a smooth paste. All these veggies will now become invisible in the sauce!

Transfer this past back to the saucepan. Now add your tin of tomatoes to the food processor. Blend until smooth then also add into the saucepan with the vegetable paste. Add salt to taste and let simmer on a very low heat until gnocchi is ready.

Once the potatoes are baked, let them cool to touch. Peel the skins with a knife and your hands. While they are still warm, mash them in a bowl with a pinch of sea salt and add the two egg yolks. You should have a sticky potato mash.

Dust a clean dry bench with a little flour and turn the mash out onto the bench. Start to add flour to the mash by dusting it over the top and gently kneading. It is much softer than pizza or bread dough so just use slight pressure and gently form the dough as you add flour. You may not need all the flour, just keep adding and gently kneading until the dough is no longer sticky and doesn’t easily break up in your hands.

Once your dough is ready, cut it up into fist-sized balls. Then using your hands just gently start to roll it into a long sausage shape. Keep sprinkling flour on the dough and the bench to stop the dough from sticking. Make the sausage about 20 to 30cm long and about 3cm thick.

Cut the dough sausage into roughly 3cm pieces. If you want to get tricky you can roll them off the end of a fork to create the indents in the gnocchi but this may require guidance from a Nonna. Totally OK to leave them as is. Prep and cut all your gnocchi in advance as they cook quickly.

Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil. Take a plateful of gnocchi and plunge them into the boiling water. They are ready once they rise to the top of the water (this can be about a minute or less). Using a slotted spoon remove this first batch into a bowl and keep adding a plateful at a time to the boiling water until all done.

Dish up into plates, spoon a dollop of sauce on top and sprinkle with grated parmesan.