art
Bronzino’s Panzanella
Summer wouldn’t be summer without that perfect salad, a must when it’s simply too hot to cook and all you crave are the season’s fresh offerings. Things like this caprese salad, made with heirloom tomatoes straight out of the garden and torn hunks of buffalo mozzarella. In Tuscany, it’s always and forever, panzanella, a rustic bread salad born as a way of using up day old bread and the abundance of fresh vegetables straight... Read More
The art of Renaissance comfort food
Twelve months ago, I posted a recipe from Artusi’s cookbook for a Sicilian almond pudding, biancomangiare. The 120 year old recipe is a classic, but it’s origins go back centuries further, when the pure white dish of biancomangiare was a monastery staple and bedside comfort food of chicken and almond milk. I wrote about the Renaissance version of this recipe recently for The Canberra Times, to coincide with the opening of an unprecedented... Read More
Food & Art
I’ve been spending a lot of time this week contemplating Renaissance food for an upcoming feature article I’m writing for The Canberra Times. It’s to coincide with the opening of an unprecedented show at the National Gallery of Australia – the Italian Renaissance. It’s quite a big thing, these 500 year old paintings making their way to the faraway and ancient land of Australia, and it means I’m getting stuck into two of my favourite topics:... Read More
The Artist’s Table
The Artist’s Table When you live in a city where the stones of nearly every building have witnessed the hand prints or the footsteps of famous artists and architects, you can either get used to it quickly and forget about it or continue to marvel at the history of the place with every step that you take when you pass through the city. I’m of the latter party; it was one of the things that first struck me on my very first visit to Florence as a... Read More
