The following review is by a reader who was given a cookbook from the Times. The included recipes were selected and prepared by the reader.
By Dianne Griffin
“Da Vinci’s Kitchen” transports the reader to Renaissance Italy to witness Leonardo’s love of food. Perhaps the smile on Mona Lisa was inspired from a meal prepared by the artist himself.
Leonardo appears to have been author Dave DeWitt’s vehicle for a larger idea. The cookbook, with original recipes, quotations and illustrations of kitchen oddities from the times, is more about Renaissance food than the man. Still, I found “Da Vinci’s Kitchen” fascinating.
According to biographers, Leonardo da Vinci crafted some of the most spectacular theatrical productions and banquets Europe has ever seen in the Sforza court in Milan. Da Vinci lived to be 67 — nearly twice the average life span at the time — and his longevity may well have been due to his vegetarian diet. Leonardo’s favorite food was a simple minestrone soup, and a recipe is included in the book. This particular version includes tomato paste, however, a fruit that had only been recently introduced from the New World. I’m not sure Leonardo ever tasted a tomato.
Nevertheless, I wanted to share in his love of minestrone, and decided to celebrate with a few guests. The ingredients were easy to find, and it was simple to prepare. I served the soup with a thick-crusted Italian bread to add some texture to the meal. In addition to being delicious on a cold foggy San Francisco day, Leonardo’s Favorite Dish allowed a peek into the renowned artists life.
We finished a bottle of white wine, and after the second bottle was uncorked, our epic argument over the origins of pasta fizzled out. According to the author, wine was consumed in great quantities during the Renaissance, and Italians considered it a food group. Here is a breakdown of a food budget from the Pope’s School in 1365:
Another of my favorite characters included in the book was from the wealthy banking family of Florence: the Lady Catherine Medici (1519-1589). She greatly improved the food of the French court after her marriage to the king of France. Catherine was known to be a lover of the artichoke and brazenly ate the aphrodisiac in public. One of her favorite foods was “co*ck’s kidneys and combs fried with artichoke bottoms.” During one feast, she ate so much of this dish “she thought she would die,” according to chronicler Pierre de L’Estoile.
The artichoke bottom recipe was not included in the book, but many original recipes from the Renaissance are enclosed. The recipe for Camelline Sauce is attributed to Platina Sacchi (1451-1481) who borrowed it from Martino, credited for the first printed cookbook appearing in 1471. As the recipe reveals, there was a lot of red wine involved, which explains the passion the recipe is supposed to stimulate:
Platina’s Camelline Sauce: Take three pieces of bread, toasted and soaked in red wine and pound with raisins. Then soak this in red wine, must, verjuice, or vinegar. Put in as much as you like of ground pepper, cinnamon, and cloves. When it has been passed through a sieve into a bowl, serve to your guests. It is easily digested, is nourishing, makes the body fat, stimulates passion, and helps the stomach and liver.
I wanted to briefly touch on one chapter, “Invasion of the Foreign Crops.” During the Crusades, Europeans discovered Saracen cuisine in Arab lands, including ingredients that were little-known or unknown in Western Europe. The new ingredients included sugar, almonds, pistachios, rice, dates, citrus fruits, pomegranates, rose water and spinach. And yes, the master, durum wheat. Macaroni would not be what it is today without this wheat. Hard wheat has high gluten and low moisture, ensuring that pasta won’t break during the drying process and that it will retain its shape and texture during the cooking process.
“The earliest evidence of a true macaroni occurs at the juncture of medieval Arab cultures,” says food writer Clifford Wright in the book. The theory holds that the nomadic Arabs needed a portable food that was light, nourishing and filling, and thus they invented pasta.
Ode to Macaroni:
Beautiful and white As you emerge in groups Out of the machine If on a cloth You are made to lie You look to me like the Milky Way. Zounds! Great Desire, Master of this earthly life, I waste away, I faint from the wish To taste you O maccheroni!
— Filippo Sagruttendio, from “Le laude de li maccarune” (Praise to Macaroni), 1646
This book will appeal to cooking and food enthusiasts as well as art and history buffs, debaters and gamblers. OK, maybe not gamblers, but the book does inspire lively topics to discuss over a meal. I did enjoy cooking a few of the recipes and talking about the history of food and its movement around the globe and its eventual arrival into our stomachs. Salute!
Leonardo’s Favorite Dish (Minestrone Toscana)
Serves 4
9 cups water
11/2 cups dried white beans
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 onion, chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
1/2 head of cabbage, chopped
2 leeks, chopped
2 zucchini, chopped
1 sprig fresh basil, minced
1 whole clove
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, minced
1/2 cup risen or orzo pasta
Salt to taste
Per serving: 430 calories, 22 g protein, 71 g carbohydrates, 9 g total fat, 1.5 g saturated fat, 0 cholesterol, 20 mg sodium, 24 g fiber. Calories from fat: 19 percent.
— Times analysis
