Delizia! - Tapa blanda

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

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.