Katie Caldesi

Many of these dishes are not what I would consider a salad. They are artfully arranged slices of cold meat atop a selection of artfully plated, hard to source greens and other veg drizzled with sauce. In Elizabeth Goudge's Linnets and Valerians, the long-suffering servant sighs that the master never considers that meat has to be cooked before it becomes cold meat; at least the writers of this book give instructions for the cooking of the meat and of the vegetables that undergo grilling before plating, but it's still onerous. All of the salads are onerous. I'm not sure who the intended audience for this book is, but a pretentious restaurateur might find it useful. It's not really the book for someone who cooks for a family at home.

I need a new tag for books that are not only gone, but more emphatically discarded. Yeet!… (meer)

Katie Caldesi and Giancarlo Cadesi, the couple behind a series of greater London based culinary enterprises, have a new book out: "Venice: Recipes Lost and Found." Searching an anonymously authored 14th-century Venetian manuscript "Libro per Cuoco" (Book for Cook) for clues, the authors lead us through an engaging culinary mystery. Why did Venice, once renowned for its extravagantly spiced food, seem to forget its storied past? Researching the case, Giancarlo worked in a marvelous Venetian restaurant situated near Piazza San Marco - the Bistrot de Venise - and gathered recipe ideas from their historically inspired dishes. Katie and Giancarlo also wandered through the maze of Venetian streets, searching for memories of the Serenissima's culinary history. From the city's last remaining spice shop, on the Calle degli Spezieri (Street of the Spice Merchants), to the numerous bàcari and cicchetti bars, and to Venice's seemingly hidden but resurgent gourmet restaurants, the Caldesi's find answers to their questions and share with us their delicious findings. Giancarlo in an interview about the book with Felicity Cloake said,“Even today, for the Italians, Venice is a region apart. When the Roman empire fell, the people there felt no one would protect them, so they had to swim to the islands, to close themselves off. It’s a fantastic place, more than a dream.” Illustrated with gorgeous photographs by Helen Cathcart, and filled with sumptuous recipes, "Venice: Recipes Lost and Found" provides a passport to Venice's culinary past as well as a guide to current trends in Northern Italian cooking. As an added bonus, Katie and Giancarlo include a list of their favorite restaurants in Venice, so you too can search out the history of Venetian cuisine.

Highly recommended. Be sure to read while sipping a glass of sparkling prosecco.… (meer)