If I post here that I am getting ready to start a new project, I will have to at least make a half hearted effort to make some progress. This is probably not the best time to start something as complicated as this; I'm embarking on two pretty big endeavors already. However, if I wait for the "best time" to start (as I have been for several years where this particular challenge is concerned) it will never get done. That is not an option. I WANT to succeed at this.
Perhaps I am spurred along at the moment by the current popularity of the Julie/Julia project. This is, after all, a cooking project. I will not, though, be cooking my way through a modern cookbook with ready-to-use recipes spelled out for me. I will be working from a rough translation of a 400+ year old Italian cookbook.
Originally published in 1549, the Libro Novo of Christofaro Messisbugo is probably the pivotal work that signaled the change from Medieval humoral theory cooking to lavish banqueting. Forget what the French believe about their place in the history of fine dining; the Italians were there first.
The Libro Novo was translated by a dear friend and mentor of mine: Charles Potter. It is mostly for him that I wish to turn this work into a functional cookbook accessible to the 21st C. It is also for the love of history and food that I want to be able to create recipes that will do honor to the past, educate the present and delight the taste buds of the future.
Does all of this sound ambitious and arrogant? I hope not. I just want to play with food, and help bring a bit of the past alive again. This work has never, as far as I know, been translated into English before now. I've never run into a source with all of the recipes worked out in modern notation. I want to change that.
So, keep me honest. Keep me cooking. Prod me if I slack off and don't post often enough. I'm going to start cooking this weekend. I'll keep you posted!
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