Thursday, 1 August 2024

Winter in Egypt

Aswan to Wadi Halfa

Big scarlet Rolls Royce
Linnet Ridgeway 
Autocratic features

Malton-under-Wode
Wode Hall

Chez Ma Tante

An ecstasy of strange discordant noises
The fat woman in purple was looking radiant

Snow on the Desert's Face
Under the Fig Tree

Pearl-handled

J



* A found poem inspired by Death on the Nile written by Agatha Christie *


Pastasciutta

Information taken from 'The Futurist Cookbook' written by Filippo Tomaso Marinetti 


~ All the defenders of pasta and implacable enemies of Futurist cooking are melancholy types, content with their melancholy and propagandists of melancholy.

 ~ Pasta - the gloomy satisfaction of stopping up a black hole. This voracious hole is an incurable sadness.[...] nothing can fill it. Only a futurist meal can lift their spirits.

~ Pasta is anti-virile because a heavy bloated stomach does not encourage physical enthusiasm for a woman, nor favour the possibility of possessing her at any time.

~ The habitual and exaggerated use of pasta certainly causes obesity and exaggerated abdominal volume. The great consumers of pasta have slow and Pacific characters, while meat eaters are quick and aggressive (Prof. Nicola Pender - Clinician).

~ To vary our foods is a biological law; experience shows the constant repetition of the same food is a cause of damage (Prof. Senator U. Gabbi - Clinician).

~ I believe that the use of pasta may be harmful to intellectual workers, to people who lead a sedentary life and, above all, to people who low themselves meat and other dishes as well (Prof. Senator Albertoni).

~ It's a matter of taste and of the price in the market. In any case the best thing is a mixed diet and never one based on a single food (Prof. A. Herlitzka -Physiologist).

~ The nutritive value of pastasciutta does not offer any special characteristics that might make it preferable to those of other types of farinaceous foods (Prof. Antonio Riva - Clinician).

~ Pasta cannot be considered a food which is easily digested because it dilates the stomach and unlike bread does not undergo a sufficient preparation through mastication (Prof  Dr C. Tarchetti).

~ The Duke of Bovino, Mayor of Naples, declared that the Angels in Paradise eat nothing but vermicelli with tomato sauce.

~ Cavaliere Pettini, head chef to the King of Italy, says: It is beyond doubt that all farinaceous foods weigh the body down and in consequence are a threat to the intelligence. He also says: The necessity of innovations, of modernism in cooking too, a business which must also respond to the times and even lead them.

~ Schopenhauer styled [pasta] the food of the resigned. Alas, even our upper classes, the intellectuals, even the so-called leaders don't know how to feed themselves properly.

~ Surgeon, Giovanni da Vigo, gave an explicit formal warning against the abuse of pasta, the prescription for a bloated sixteenth century: all the pasta dishes must be used very infrequently.

~ Libero Glaucoma Silvano wrote: wasn't it time to do something about that barbaric food [...] I'm speaking of macaroni in a sauce.

~ Dacovio Saraceni wrote: macaroni was born and raised among the Ostrogoth who often enjoyed comforting themselves with him.

~ Audisio wrote: yes, pasta really is a dictatorship of the stomach.

~ Marinetti wrote in his manifesto: no more spaghetti for the Italians.

~ It is not just a question of replacing pasta with rice, or of ordering one dish to another, but of inventing new foods.


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Bonus quote from an unknown source:
"Scientists have found that the gene for low IQ is biologically paired with that of a fondness for pasta".


The Italian Futurist Movement

 Banquet for the Milanese Futurists
15th November 1930
The Penna d'Oca restaurant 


Oie grasse
Ice cream on the moon
Tears of the god 'Gavi'
Consumato of roses and sunshine
Mediterranean favourite zig, zug, zag
Roast lamb in lion sauce
Little salad at daybreak 
Blood of Bacchus 'from the Ricasoli estate'
Well-tempered little artichoke wheels
Spun sugar rain
Exhilarating 'cinzano' foam
Fruit gathered in Eve's garden
Coffee and liqueurs


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The First Futurist Dinner
8th March 1931
The Holy Palate Restaurant 


Intuitive Antipasto
Sunshine Soup
Totalrice (Italian style risotto seasoned with beer, wine and fondue)
Aerofood (tactile with sounds and smells)
Ultravirile
Sculpted Meat
Edible Landscape
Italian Sea
Mediterranean Salad
Chickenfiat
Equator + North Pole
Elasticake
Network in the Sky
Fruits of Italy

Wines by Costa
Beers by Metzger
Spumanti by Cora
Perfumes by Dory


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Examples of Definitive Futurist Dinners

Wedding Banquet

A tureen of magnificent soup (rice, chicken livers and beans in quail broth)

A tray of Milanese saffron risotto and an abundance of truffles

Sauteed mushrooms 

Fernet for everyone 



A Dinner of White Desire

 Twenty fresh white eggs injected with a delicate perfume of acacia flowers

A large turren of cold milk with cubes of mozzarella cheese and sweet white Muscat grapes 

A tray laden with piece of coconut studded with nougat enclosed in layers of butter and arranged on a bed of boiled rice and whipped cream

Undiluted abuse, grappa or gin

Serves ten





* Information derived from 'The Futurist Cookbook' written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti *