Matthew Fort

While it's a generally nice read, the writing just doesn't flow. Here's an example paragraph:

"What makes penne streaked with a sauce of tomato and pork so satisfying? Could there be anything more straightforward? Well, yes, there probably could be, but you could never have said this was a fancy dish. Yet it was fabulously pleasing on so many levels." (p. 101).

What dish is he talking about? You don't know reading this review, and I didn't know when I was reading the book. This is typical of his writing style throughout.

I was in the mood to be wooed by this book, to become obsessed with Sicily and envious of his adventures there. The wooing did not happen. There were moments of delight, and he is definitely at his best when describing a meal. Everything else was mush.… (más)

A series of vignettes loosely tied together by strips of road along the Italian countryside. At its surface, it would be easy to dismiss this work as a hedonistic and indulgent (if well-worded) sample of literary food porn, but the subtext in Fort's travelogue ripples with a didactic undercurrent.

The socio-political and economic change Italy has seen over the last century, and may well see in the next, is traceable in the small stories he details throughout his journey, and make this work core complex than it is simply indulgent. Mixed in with recipes for things you will likely be content to simply drool over are subtle jabs that may nod gently in Michael Pollan's direction as much as they pay respect to the rustic appeal of the many foods and faces he encounters.

Like a well-crafted menu, there's a little something to amuse anyone in this offering. If you've read it before, it will likely one day be worth a revisit in years to come, either for escape or to rediscover the richness of an Italy that exisits not in pasta, but in its distinct and stubborn pastorality.… (más)

The first time Matthew Fort set foot on the island of Sicily he was the tender age of 26. He was visiting in the early 1970s and was looking forward to the beaches and spending time with his brother. What he didn’t realise was just how this place would get its hooks into him.

Which was why three decades after that first visit he was back again to explore the island. Travelling backwards and forwards on a scarlet Vespa, that he had named Monica this was a pilgrimage with the sole intention of discovering the nicest foods that he could find.

Occasionally this book will terrify you, as he takes his life into his own hands to ride the scooter from place to place, and I know how bad it is even when you are in a car. Each meal that he has with the locals seems more memorable than the last, as they welcome his curiosity about their culture and produce from the land. Mixed in with all of this is a little history, landscape and snapshots of some great people who care about the food that they eat and who work the magic to turn ingredients that are full of flavour into mouth-watering dishes. Reading this book will make you very, very hungry. Wonderful stuff.… (más)