AFTER savouring the first mouthful of his salad Nicoise, Lawrence Dallaglio calls for olive oil and douses the dry-looking leaves.

Happy with the result, the broad-shouldered former Wasps and England rugby union captain, who retired in 2008, proceeds to attack his lunch with zest.

“Because my dad was in the hotel business, I was always waiting in the restaurant. I built up some expensive tastes,” says the 38-year-old.

“Hotel food can be a little bit samey. While on tour I would always try and find the restaurants where the locals would eat, so you know you’ll get good food.”

These days he has to cut down on the calories and claims to only enjoy a “small lunch.”

“I have to be mindful as I’m not doing as much exercise as I was,” he says.

“The 12-pack is slowly shrinking.”

Dallaglio, who describes himself as the England team’s “chief concierge” during his years at the top, has just launched his first cookbook, My Italian Family, as well as a range of pasta sauces.

Yet he states emphatically: “I’m not a star on a jar,” when asked about the new project.

“I have been very involved with food and everything to do with food all my life,” he explains.

“Food was a celebration of our life and that passion for food is something that I have taken on. And it came in quite handy as a rugby player as well, with all the training.”

For Lawrence, born Lorenzo, this project is the culmination of a lifelong journey.

Three years ago, his mother Eileen died from cancer and in the same year Dallaglio began working on a cooking project with his Italian father Vincenzo, 76, the man who taught him to appreciate food.

Vincenzo moved to London after the Second World War and married Eileen, an Irish immigrant living in the East End.

Summer holidays for Lawrence and his sister Francesca, who died tragically aged 19 when the Marchioness riverboat sank on the Thames in 1989, were spent in Turin, where his grandparents ran a fruit stall.

“The process helped bring my father and I closer together after the death of my mother,” he says.

“The recipes were still very hard to prise away from him, though. You know Italians.”

While he admits the cookbook, which centres around three generations of Dallagio men cooking (Vincenzo, Lorenzo and his son Enzo) was a “slightly selfish legacy,” the result is still touching. It also includes pictures of Dallaglio's wife Alice, his mother and daughter Ella.

Perhaps the most touching is one of Dallaglio and his sister Francesca, taken years before the tragic event that lead his mother to campaign for justice throughout her life, and inspired Dallaglio to start his own charitable foundation.

“Life is about shared experiences and I have always been a team player,” he says.

“Mum would be very proud of this book. She had a wonderful life of great food, being looked after by a man who could cook – although she would think of a way to say that she was responsible for teaching us.”

Try the recipe, below, from Dallaglio’s book • My Italian Family Cookbook by Lawrence Dallaglio is published in hardback by Simon & Schuster, priced £18.99.