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Delizia!

On sale

9th March 2009

Price: £12.99

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Selected: ebook / ISBN-13: 9781848947429

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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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Reviews

<i>Financial Times</i>
'Mouthwatering...like lunch in the green hills above Lake Como, or dinner at the horseshoe bays of Sardinia, Dickie's book is sheer pleasure.'
<i>Guardian</I>
'Informs as well as enlightens...a clever and provoking account of Italy's history'
<i>Independent</I>
'Full of fascinating detail'
<i>Observer</I>
'Important'
<i>Sunday Telegraph</i>
'Like a really classy cook shop, Delizia! is stuffed with arcane culinary facts and gadgets, anecdotes, recipes and stories.'
<i>The Sunday Times</I>
'A feast of horrors and delights...hard to fault: enlightening and consistently moreish'
<i>Sunday Telegraph</i>
delightfully witty and anecdote-rich
<i>Sunday Times</i>
'witty history of Italy through food.'
<i>Financial Times</i>
'Mouthwatering...like lunch in the green hills above Lake Como, or dinner at the horseshoe bays of Sardinia, Dickie's book is sheer pleasure.'
<i>Guardian</I>
'Informs as well as enlightens...a clever and provoking account of Italy's history'
<i>Independent</I>
'Full of fascinating detail'
<i>Observer</I>
'Important'
<i>Sunday Telegraph</i>
'Like a really classy cook shop, Delizia! is stuffed with arcane culinary facts and gadgets, anecdotes, recipes and stories.'
<i>The Sunday Times</I>
'A feast of horrors and delights...hard to fault: enlightening and consistently moreish'
<i>Sunday Telegraph</i>
delightfully witty and anecdote-rich
<i>Sunday Times</i>
'witty history of Italy through food.'