Al Dente - Hardcover

Winner, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847374352 ISBN 13: 9781847374356

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2012

Synopsis

Imagine the River Tiber as an alimentary tract. Picture a hungry saint. Think of erotic Renaissance fruit paintings, transubstantiation and a tiramisu cafe where magic is surely on the menu...This highly original interpretation of Rome's history, culture, art and religion takes the form of a book about food that's not really about food at all. During his first two years in Rome, David Winner found himself in turn amazed and overwhelmed by its physical, historical and cultural vastness. Then a chance encounter with an extraordinary pudding provided him with the means to start digesting his surroundings. That evening he was struck by the significance of the Roman attitude to food: a unique and unequivocal relationship between sustenance and existence, where every last aspect of life is (and always has been) 'pickled in alimentation'. In Al Dente, Winner takes us on a stroll through the city as he muses idiosyncratically on all things comestible and much else besides. Here we learn about Rome as metropolis and necropolis, about tasty vineyard snails and the food-and-sex scandal that sent Saint Jerome packing. The cinematic greats such as Argento, Fellini and Ferreri are discussed alongside historical political satire where grocery orgies were art and the penis was the subject of hagiographies. There are the bloodthirsty antics of an eighteenth-century executioner who worked for the pope, stories of immolation, architecture and artichokes, and a telephone interview with a nun who makes Eucharistic wafers. There's also a nice 1891 recipe for stewed lamb's head. Winner is a master of wit and diversity with a seemingly insatiable appetite for peculiar detail and disturbances on the cultural landscape. In Al Dente, his ability to explore the world around him as a series of interconnections provides an intriguing new portrait of a remarkable city - a veritable trifle of Roman bedrock and apogee, cosmos and counterculture to be devoured with gusto. Buon appetito...

About this title

Review

`The book is both anecdotal and historical, passionate and detached... a sophisticated travel guide, and a quirky recipe book' --Financial Times

`Something like a fusion of Coleridge's "Table Talk" and Marinetti's "The Futurist Cookbook", peopled with eccentric film-makers, anorexic saints and wafer-making nuns. It is also in part a ramble around the city, and Winner is an entertaining guide - zestful and thoughtful in equal measure' --Guardian

'Quirky, funny and insightful' John Foot, TLS

'David Winner's flavourful book about the food of Rome travels far beyond recipes to offer an intellectual blow-out. Wittily blending art, history and religion with culinary lore, he shows how the Roman table has nourished the Eternal City's culture' --Metro

Winner, a British writer who has lived in Rome for the past decade, sorts out this jumble of ideas in a series of intriguing and lively essays, making it clear from the off that, while food plays a major role in Roman life, it is not his subject matter but a unifying theme. The result is something like a fusion of Coleridge's 'Table Talk' and Marinetti's 'The Futurist Cookbook', peopled with eccentric film-makers, anorexic saints and wafer-making nuns. --Observer

Intriguing... This eccentric salmagundi of a book is a delight, always entertaining and often revelatory. Winner convincingly demonstrates that the culture from which food emerges is far more interesting than dishes per se --Independent

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1847374352
• ISBN 13: 9781847374356
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304