I live in Torino [Turin], a town where I grew up, where I was born. There’s a famous dish from there called bagna cauda. It’s a meeting of the garlic from the area of Piedmont, the mountains, with the anchovies coming from the sea in Liguria. It’s a very simple dish, a bit like a broth, perfect in winter, and you eat it with raw vegetables of the season. But there’s so much garlic in it that, when you eat it, you need a couple of days away from other people.

There is a connection between how you eat and how you make music: the way you blend the elements that you eat, the colours, it’s similar to composing a piece of music. If I take my solo piano repertoire, I would associate it with a very simple food, with few elements and few colours, not overelaborate. If I think of a piece of mine with more instruments, more orchestral, I would associate it with a dish, maybe a soup, that is made of different elements that were cooked for hours, and you can taste the different layers and ingredients in your mouth.

I’m a maniac about hot peppers, the red ones. I am very happy that in March I’m going to India, where I can expand my collection.

My father was a publisher. Every Wednesday they had a meeting in the publishing house and he would bring home some writers – sometimes important writers like Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg, Primo Levi. When I was about 16 years old, I was alone for a few months with my father, and he would call me at 5pm on Wednesdays and say, “Tonight, we are six!” And after a few months of experimenting, I was able to prepare a dinner for six, eight people. I learned a lot in those years. And it was nice to have those intellectuals coming there and saying, “We love this.”

In general, I like more simple food, the local food and traditional food, more than the 10 stars. I’ve been to incredible restaurants, but if I had to choose, I would go, for example, to a local pub in the UK, where you have the fireplace and there’s a lady that has prepared a stew that is beautiful. I like more that style.

My family produces wine in Piedmont. My grandfather bought some land at the end of the 19th century. Everybody in the area was making wine, but he was the first one to bottle a specific wine called dolcetto that, before him, you could only buy in big amounts. It started as a little winery, but now is quite big, and it’s very well respected. Every year it’s a different taste, and that is very beautiful. It’s a very special connection that you have with the land, with the wine that comes from there; waiting for the harvest and hoping that it doesn’t rain.

I have quite a collection of teas now. I keep buying new, different flavours to try. My favourite, which I have almost every morning, is an assam from Fortnum & Mason that’s from a little garden called Dikom. Then I also like very much the greens, and Oolong from China, specifically tieguanyin, that’s very good for working, for concentration, for your brain.

I enjoy very much buying different pans. Sometimes when I finish work and I don’t know what to do, I go to a certain shop and buy a new pan, and I’m very happy. I imagine all the food that I can cook in it.

My favourite things

Food
I have to say bagna cauda. When you are in the countryside, it’s beautiful to have it. It’s very tasty and very specific, and I love it.

Drink
I will go for tea. Even though I like wine, at this time of my life, tea gives me the same wide range of tastes that I can have with wine, but without alcohol.

Place to eat
The last time I was in London, there was a fantastic vegan restaurant called Farmacy in Notting Hill. It had an estate in the countryside where they produced all the vegetables that you could eat there. It’s closed now, unfortunately, but I think they would like to reopen.

Dish to make
Last year I bought a Moroccan tagine and I very much enjoy making a tagine with vegetables or sometimes with fish and all the proper spices, like turmeric. Then, of course, my selection of hot chillies.

Ludovico Einaudi’s new album The Summer Portraits (Decca) is out now. He tours the UK and Ireland from 30 June. For more information, see ludovicoeinaudi.com