"The Perfect Egg" by Aldo Buzzi
I while ago I bought a lovely little book in a charity shop and what a wonderful
find. I keep it by me to dip into whilst
waiting for something e.g. for my man to come back to the car, or the kettle to
boil, that sort of thing.
This collection of 39 essays on the matter
of food and food related ponderings is a joy to read, erudite, funny,
thoughtful, mouth watering, the writing is sublime and, as the Mail on Sunday says
(although I don't always agree with them, I do here) ...
There are indeed a few recipes in the book but
as the Mail on Sunday put it they are "almost incidental", they are
also in some cases a little strange such as this boiled egg recipe from a
fifteenth century chef ...
"Put fresh eggs into cold water and
allow them to boil for the duration of a Paternoster or a little longer"!
Aldo Buzzi seems to have been quite a guy;
we was an architect, a food and travel writer and seems to have done quite a
lot in the film industry from set design to screenwriting. He lived to be 99. "The Perfect Egg" was published in
Italian in 1979 and, luckily for me, was translated into English by one Guido
Waldman and published in 2005. I cannot
recommend this book highly enough - get it from Amazon here.
I shall certainly be looking out for his other
writings, "A Weakness for
Almost Everything" which was published in English in 1999 sounds particularly
appealing.
Thank you Mr. Buzzi
In other News
This is the first fair day we have had since the
festive season began; hopefully this bodes well for the rest of 2013. My darling and I went to nearby Charlestown for
a wander and a beer (or cider in my case).
The beach is stony but the stones are pretty and we kept picking up our
favourites but at the end of the walk we released them back into the wild.
1 comment:
Sounds like an interesting read and man. I love finding vintage or out of print cookbooks to read. Thanks for sharing this one!
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