DaVinci's Kitchen: A secret history of Italian Cuisine
New cooking book reveals a little-known side of the famous artist
New cooking book reveals a little-known side of the famous artist
Leonardo da Vinci: painter, sculptor, inventor, mathematician – chef?
While details of Da Vinci’s artistic life are common knowledge, especially after the immense success of the Da Vinci code, a new book provides insight into a different aspect of the life of the definite Renassaince genius – his diet.
Da Vinci’s kitchen: A secret history of Italian Cuisine (BenBella Books, January 2007) by Dave Dewitt, bestselling author of several cooking books, takes a fresh approach do the artist’s life and to food in Renaissance Italy.
“Reading several of his biographies triggered a ‘where’s the food?’ response in me as a food writer,” the author has declared, “and prompted me to study his notebooks to find the food reference in them.”
The book reveals a lot of interesting facts, such as – Da Vinci invented two rotisserie-style devices for cooks to use to turn meat on a spit while it was cooking. One used a counterweight and a rope wrapped around a cylinder, and the other ingeniously harnessed the power of heated air to turn the gears of the spit over the fire. We also find out that during the Renaissance Italians recommended a very long cooking time for pasta – the concept of al dente came around much later, in the 17th century to be exact when cook suggested pouring cold water over coked pasta to stop the cooking and make it firmer.
During Da Vinci’s time, people chose their wine based on their social standing – whites, which were more refined, for the upper classes, and reds, which were cheaper, for the poor.
The book even includes a recipe for a salad dressing recovered from Da Vinci’s notebooks. Its pages reveal that later in life the artist became a vegetarian, a really strange decision and condemnable lifestyle in Renaissance Italy, where meats were largely consumed. In total the books included thirty recipes to recreate Da Vinci’s dishes and sumptuous feasts of the upper class of Italian renaissance society. Who knows, maybe by following his diet we will all become ingenious!
Leonardo’s Salad Dressing
Recreated by Dave Dewitt
Ingredients
10 teaspoons minced fresh Italian parsley
1 teaspoon minced fresh spearmint
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme
salt to taste
Freshly and coarsely ground black pepper
3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup wine vinegar
Combine all ingredients in a jar and shake well. Serve it with a salad Platina-style, consisting of lettuce, mint, fennel, parsley, thyme and marjoram.
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