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GIULIANO BUGIALLI's	Foods of Italy

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A Tuscan Heritage

	Born in Florence, Bugialli grew up in a villa outside the city where his father was the director of one of Italy's large wineries. His family was steeped in the classic tradition of Tuscan cooking, and he developed an early scholarly interest in Italian culinary history.
	With degrees in Languages and Literature from the Universities of Florence and Rome, Bugialli began to travel to New York in the 70's to teach Italian. Soon, the desire to entertain guests with incomparable meals, as he used to do regularly in Florence, pushed him back to the library and to the stove, until he was able to reproduce in his own American kitchen the finest Italian dishes. This was no small achievement, considering that in those days the American market had not yet discovered the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, and very few authentic Italian food products were easily or widely available in the United States. Bugialli's reputation as an authoritative and entertaining Italian culinary expert grew rapidly.
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				BACKGROUND TRIVIA !!! No regular, everyday-meal silverware here... The serrated knife, the fork and the specialized holder reproduced in the background are three authentic 17th century precision tools used for the carving of fruit! The fine carving of fruit, vegetables and meats for decoration and presentation had a very important part in the Italian Renaissance meal. No book has documented it better than Il Trinciante, first printed in Venice in 1580. The volume details the carving and boning -- the latter especially for rolling and stuffing -- of every beast eaten, all carefully illustrated. It also includes decorative carving for presentation of fruit and fish. With page after page of drawings, Il Trinciante offers amazing evidence of Italian Reinassance cuisine's highly ritualized sophistication, yet we are not even sure about the identity of who wrote it. The name of the author, Vincenzo Cervio, may have actually been a pseudonym for the Cavalier Reale Fusoritto de Nanni whose name appears on the title page in some early editions. More trivia?

© Giuliano Bugialli - Foods of Italy