The Perfect Egg and Other Secrets - Hardcover

Buzzi, Aldo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747576319 ISBN 13: 9780747576310

Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2005

Synopsis

'The writer who never talks about eating, about appetite, hunger, food, about cooks and meals, arouses my suspicion, as though some vital element were missing in him.' Scholarly, playful, idiosyncratic and witty, Aldo Buzzi's The Perfect Egg is an excursion into the food that has obsessed, provoked and intrigued the author through his life. A book of genial and highly refined chat, enriched with personal anecdotes, recipes and quotations from literature and history, it is a tribute to the profound pleasures of food.

About this title

About the Author:

Aldo Buzzi was born in Como in 1910. He is an architect and an essayist who worked in Italian cinema and as a publisher for many years. Aldo Buzzi lives in Milan. Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) was one of America's best-loved artists, renowed for the drawings that appeared in The New Yorker and for the artwork exhibited internationally in museums and galleries. He and Aldo Buzzi met in architecture school in Milan in the 1930s and remained close friends until Steinberg's death.

From The New Yorker:

This collection of ruminations on cuisine and cookery offers the perspective of a refined palate wed to a lively intellect. Buzzi expounds upon the olla podrida beloved by Sancho Panza in "Don Quixote" (the ancient Greek precursor of which had a name a hundred and eighty-four letters long) and ponders Kafka's eating habits, noting that his Czech name means "crow," a bird that makes a fine soup. Illustrations by Saul Steinberg are fittingly whimsical: a lunch menu that includes a dental chart; a place setting made up of a hammer, pliers, and screwdriver. Examples of Buzzi's urbane culinary style can be found throughout the book. A recipe for ṕcula ad caval (horsemeat stew) concludes, "A distant, almost imperceptible whinny will warn the person who is familiar with horses that the dish is now cooked."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0747576319
• ISBN 13: 9780747576310
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160
• Illustrator: Illus. By Saul Steinberg