A book for the wish list

I gave an author chat at the very impressive Borders in Fulham not long ago. At the end the store very kindly said, by way of thanks, ‘Pick a book.’ It was not was easy to choose. There were two floors to the place, all of them stacked with interesting fiction and non-fiction, and titles I’d never heard of too.

And so to a real discovery… The Oxford Companion to Italian Food. This is a wonderful work by Gillian Riley, no mere recipe book but an encyclopaedia devoted to recording the astonishing richness of Italian cuisine. Anyone who spends much time in Italy comes to be fascinated and, to some part, infuriated by the variety of food on offer. This is not simply regional. Each borgo seems to possess its own specialities, or variation on a theme. Riley can’t have caught every last dish in Italy. Is such a thing humanly possible? But the breadth of her research is simply awe-inspiring.

Finally, I know what agretti, the sharp, grass-like vegetable seen in Rome in Spring, really are. And lardo di colonnata too, cured lard, stored underground in marble tubs, immersed in brine and rubbed with herbs. Bread, wine, meat, vegetables, fowl… nothing has escaped Riley’s beady eye, and alongside the food she recounts tales of illustrious epicures, the eating habits of famous Italians, and casts the odd reflection on the role of eating in Italian art (remember, one of Caravaggio’s several convictions stemmed from his beating of a waiter for serving an artichoke improperly).

This is a great book and a wonderful present for anyone with half an interest in Italian food. Thank you Borders… for the talk, and being such a clever book store you stock delights like this on your shelves!