Delizia! - Softcover

John Dickie

3.85

474 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340896418 ISBN 13: 9780340896419

Publisher: Sceptre, 2008

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Everyone loves Italian food. But how did the Italians come to eat so well? The advertising industry tells us the answer lies in the vineyards and olive groves of Tuscany - among sun-weathered peasants, and mammas serving pasta under the pergola. Yet this nostalgic fantasy has little to do with the real history of Italian cuisine.For a thousand years, Italys cities have been magnets for everything that makes for great eating: ingredients, talent, money, and power. So Italian food is city food, and telling its story means telling the story of the Italians as a people of city dwellers. In DELIZIA! the author of the acclaimed COSA NOSTRA takes a revelatory historical journey through the flavours of Italys cities. From the bustle of Medieval Milan, to the bombast of Fascist Rome; from the pleasure gardens of Renaissance Ferrara, to the putrid alleyways of nineteenth-century Naples. In rich slices of urban life, DELIZIA! shows how violence and intrigue, as well as taste and creativity, combined to make the worlds favourite cuisine.

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Review:

As John Dickie’s fascinating Delizia amply demonstrates, Italian food has enjoyed a cultural imperialism that few other than national cuisines have achieved. Subtitled The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food, Dickie’s thoroughly researched (but highly accessible) book demonstrates that more chefs are in thrall to Italian cuisine (and its tried and trusted ingredients) than to that of any other nation, and while pasta remains a standard food for those whose pockets are empty, Italian cuisine graces the menus of some of the world's most exclusive restaurants.

Dickie is particularly adroit conjuring up many aspects of Italian culture (his Cosa Nostra was a nigh-definitive study of a less cherishable aspect of Italian culture) and here he combines scholarship and enthusiasm to great effect. Part of his agenda is to dispel the advertising industry perception that the vineyards and olive groves of Tuscany (with their sun-tanned, contented workers) represent the whole story of Italian food. Not the case, says Dickie, and it’s in the urban heart of the Italian city that the elements of the nation's cuisine are forged: the cookery talent, the all-important financing and even the ingredients. Control of all this, as the author notes, represents considerable power, and we are taken on historical journey throughout all of Italy, in the time and space: from mediaeval Milan to fascist Rome, from Renaissance Ferrara to 19th-century Naples. What makes this particularly involving is the fashion in which Dickie juggles his obvious scholarship with the sheer, undeniable pleasure this affords both him (and, concomitantly) us. Delizia may well transform every trip you take from now on to an Italian restaurant. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

'Mouthwatering...like lunch in the green hills above Lake Como, or dinner at the horseshoe bays of Sardinia, Dickie's book is sheer pleasure.' --Financial Times

'A remarkable, vivid story' --Observer

'Informs as well as enlightens...a clever and provoking account of Italy's history' --Guardian

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