"The Perfect Egg" by Aldo Buzzi - an enthusiastic Review

A while ago I bought this lovely little book in a charity shop, what a wonderful find.  I keep it by me to dip into whilst waiting for something e.g. for my man to come back to the car, or the kettle to boil, that sort of thing.

This collection of 39 essays on the matter of food and food related ponderings is a joy to read, erudite, funny, thoughtful, mouth watering, the writing is sublime and, as the Mail on Sunday says (although I don't always agree with them, I do here) ...

“Scrumptious … the recipes here are almost incidental, stirred in with snatched of travelogue and languorous memoir that set each in time and place.”

There are indeed a few recipes in the book but as the Mail on Sunday put it they are “almost incidental”, they are also in some cases a little strange such as this boiled egg recipe from a fifteenth century chef ...

“Put fresh eggs into cold water and allow them to boil for the duration of a  Paternoster or a little longer”!

For more information on boiling eggs, how long they take and other ways to cook eggs see here.

Aldo Buzzi seems to have been quite a guy; he was an architect, a food and travel writer and seems to have done quite a lot in the film industry from set design to screenwriting.  He lived to be 99.  

The Perfect Egg was published in Italian in 1979 and, luckily for me, was translated into English by one Guido Waldman and published in 2005.  I cannot recommend this book highly enough - get it from Amazon here. 

I shall certainly be looking out for his other writings, A Weakness for Almost Everything which was published in English in 1999 sounds particularly appealing.

Thank you Mr. Buzzi.