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I was pottering around a second hand bookshop in Brighton last month; such visits occasionally yield up unexpected treasures. I found a rather splendid book titled Renaissance Of Italian Cookery. Authored by a woman called Lorenza De Medici, it summoned memories of the golden era of the Renaissance, of patronage, of great art and architecture, as well as the darker side, of poisonings and intrigue. Well, this book has none of the latter, but boasts much of the fading glory of aristocratic Italy. It is beautifully produced, and it covers Italian cuisine through 12 separate regions, explaining the intricacies and specialities of the regional cuisine with anecdotes and recipes.

For someone like me who adores Italian cuisine, I cannot tell you what sheer delight this book affords. My only other encounter with aristocratic Italy has been through the writings of Giuseppe di Lampedusa, particularly his atmospheric novel, The Leopard.However, Lorenza goes region by region and from villa to villa. And in the process, introduces one to a cast of characters, people who live in a delightful and gracious time warp, in impossibly beautiful surroundings, and compete with their neighbours through the richness and ingenuity of their table and the gossamer exquisiteness of their manners.

In this process we uncover an haute cuisine which can simply be called “the villa table”, the villas being of the aristocrats who experimented with the simplicity of the local food to weave and create something of novelty and style. This book is redolent with such recipes and crammed with information about eating habits and traditions which regrettably are now disappearing.

When we think of daal we think of it as the poor man’s food — the most basic dish in India is daal chawal. However, in Italy, it is different. The lentil figures much in Italian cooking. But did you know that lentils symbolised money and prosperity? In fact, the addition of lentils to a dish is precisely to show that the host has arrived. She writes about the extraordinary fineness of balsamic vinegar, traditionally from Modena, but comments on the fact that many of the families who make it do not sell it, keeping it for ages until it matures like a fine liquour. So much so that the author recalls attending a wedding feast where the bride and groom were toasted not with cups of champagne, but with timbles of ancient balsamico! I enjoyed her discussions on pesto, derived from the king of ligurian herbs, bascilico.My own recipe of pesto, a handful of basil leaves, garlic, parmesan, and pine nuts mixed with walnuts and olive oil does not pass muster. The author does not approve of parmesan in pesto, pecorino is the cheese. And the marble mortar should be of the finest Carrera marble, it all makes a difference.

And so we drift from noble villa to noble villa until we come to the place of serious genuflection — Tuscany.It is here that her remarks require to be quoted at length “It has often been said that there is no really classic Italian cuisine… that Italian cuisine is regional in character…I would argue that Toscana is the most typical of Italian places, so Tuscan cooking is the most Italian of cooking.”One cannot argue with that.

Email: javed.gaya@gmail.com