If you've ever wondered who Apicius was, or why Sicily has a distinctive cuisine, then check out the Oxford Companion to Italian Food - a fascinating culinary guide.
Ciabatta, the delicious Italian bread, literally means ‘a slipper’ and was probably Turkish in origin. Didn’t know that? Well what about the fact that pomodoro, tomato, literally means ‘golden apple’; that the Romans used to use impacted snow to chill their wine; or that parsley was mentioned in the writings of Pliny, who said it was so popular that its fronds were floating in every cooking pot.
Chestnut Recipe from Apicius
All these facts and more are contained in the Oxford Companion to Italian Food by Gillian Riley, (published by Oxford University Press, £19 99) a weighty volume that deserves a place on the bookshelves of all lovers of Italian food. It’s a fascinating historical reference work - describing Apicius’ recipe for lentils with chestnuts, for example, which involves parboiling chestnuts with an unusual mix of crushed peppercorns, coriander seeds, cumin, mint, rue, asafoetida, honey and vinegar. Which sounds as if Apicius (who, Gillian Riley explains, was a Roman gourmet whose name is attached to a wide selection of recipes from the 1st century AD) subscribed to the ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ school of cookery.
A Roman Aphrodisiac
Then there’s the entry on cinnamon - used largely in confectionary and desserts in Italian cuisine today - but apparently valued by the ancient Romans as a perfume, a medicine and an aphrodisiac. And in the section on cheese, we learn that in the ancient world Sicily was famed for its cheese, which was made from a mixture of goats’ and sheep’s milk
Try Some Vignarola
However, the Oxford Companion to Italian Food is much more than a history book. It also serves as a useful guide for contemporary cooks. Dip into it if you want to find out about less well-known Italian foods – such as Branzi, which Gillian Riley explains is an alpine cheese made in the town of Branzi near Bergamo. You also learn that ciriola romana is a type of bread roll from Lazio; zeppole are sweet fritters from Sardinia, and vignarola is a fashionable Roman dish that’s made in springtime. Vignarola, she says, is made with onions, diced pancetta, broad beans, peas, baby artichokes, some lettuce and a little white wine.
Sicilian Cuisine
The variations in Italian regional cuisine are also well covered in this fascinating book. And Gillian Riley gives you the historical background to the cuisine of each region. You learn, for example, that Sicily has a highly distinctive cuisine, thanks to the culinary legacy of successive invaders such as Greeks, Arabs and Normans. She describes Sicilian dishes such as taccuna – a pasta coloured with cuttlefish ink; and mafalda, a typical Sicilian bread made with semolina flour, sprinkled with sesame seeds and made into all sorts of shapes. The Oxford Companion to Italian Food is one of those books that find yourself dipping into again and again – and every time you do so, you find out another fascinating nugget about Italy and its cuisine.
