Overview

Here is an inspiring, wide-ranging A-Z guide to one of the world's best-loved cuisines. Designed for cooks and consumers alike, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food covers all aspects of the history and culture of Italian gastronomy, from dishes, ingredients, and delicacies to cooking methods and implements, regional specialties, the universal appeal of Italian cuisine, influences from outside Italy, and much more. Following in the footsteps of princes and popes, vagabond artists and cunning peasants, austere scholars and generations of unknown, unremembered women who shaped pasta, moulded cheeses and lovingly tended their cooking pots, Gillian Riley celebrates a heritage of amazing richness and delight. She brings equal measures of enthusiasm and expertise to her writing, and her entries read like mini-essays, laced with wit and gastronomical erudition, marked throughout by descriptive brilliance, and entirely free of the pompous tone that afflicts so much writing about food. The Companion is attentive to both tradition and innovation in Italian cooking, and covers an extraordinary range of information, from Anonimo Toscano, a medieval cookbook, to Bartolomeo Bimbi, a Florentine painter commissioned by Cosimo de Medici to paint portraits of vegetables, to Paglierina di Rifreddo, a young cheese made of unskimmed cows' milk, to zuppa inglese, a dessert invented by 19th century Neapolitan pastry chefs. Major topics receive extended treatment. The entry for Parmesan, for example, runs to more than 2,000 words and includes information on its remarkable nutritional value, the region where it is produced, the breed of cow used to produce it (the razza reggiana, or vacche rosse), the role of the cheese maker, the origin of its name, Molière's deathbed demand for it, its frequent and lustrous depiction in 16th and 17th century paintings, and the proper method of serving, where Riley admonishes: ""One disdains the phallic peppermill, but must always appreciate the attentive grating, at the table, of parmesan over pasta or soup, as magical in its way as shavings of truffles."" Such is the scope and flavor of The Oxford Companion to Italian Food. For anyone with a hunger to learn more about the history, culture and variety of Italian cuisine, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food offers endless satisfactions.

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9780198606178

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Reviews

A compelling reference book. Taste Italia. Get cozy on the sofa with the new 'Oxford Companion to Italian Food'. The London Paper. Gillian Riley. The research meticulous, the scholarship exacting, and the writing pure pleasure...There's a wealth of information here and it's easy to spend hours browsing the entries...This book is for those who like their facts peppered with wit, and their knowledge seasoned with good humour. Time Out. Riley is a food historian, photographer, amateur of art history, frighteningly knowledgable and charmingly opinionated. Paul Levy, Observer a grand buffet of curious delights... essential browsing for the serious Italo-foodie. John Dickie, The Guardian solid, erudite and carefully constructed... reliable but entertaining and often humorous Regina Sexton, Irish Examiner A stupendous addition to the literature of the table... quirky, opinionated, fresh-thinking, but deeply scholarly. Elisabeth Luard, The Scotsman Devotees of the best cuisine in the world should snap up The Oxford Companion to Italian Food. Christopher Hirst, The Independent Erudite, witty and stuffed with gems... reading matter comes no better. Daily Telegraph Erudite, engaging and captivating: an indispensable guide for Italophiles, food lovers and the greedily curious. Nigella Lawson This is an awe-inspiring, wide-ranging and fascinating scholarly work that has been written with love and wit. It must be the definitive reference book about Italian food. Claudia Roden a lively new addition to the family begat by Alan Davidson...a compendium that managed to pack, miraculously, all essential information into a single volume. Elisabeth Luard, Literary Review A fascinating and addictive read. Heston Blumenthal Handsome, inspirational and indispensable. Paul Levy Depth of research and the editor's original mind make this confident A-Z as entertaining as it is erudite. And witty too: fun to read on a cold day at the start of a northern winter. Don't wait for the paperback: this is a book to treasure between hard covers. Elisabeth Luard, Literary review

Author Information

Gillian Riley is a food historian and freelance typographer. She has written many books on food in art such as Renaissance Recipes and Impressionistic Picnics and is the author of A Feast for the Eyes, the National Gallery Cookbook. Riley contributes regularly to the Oxford Food Symposium. She lives in London.

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