Great are the miracles of so divers cuisines. I enjoy leafing through cookbooks and feasting my eyes on fancy photos. Visiting rustic inns and trattorias. Hanging around the stove. Losing the sense of time and place. I enjoy discussions about the metaphysics of food; this dark and secret area limited to connoisseurs only. When the time is ripe, they will bequeath their knowledge to a favourite disciple. One of the few bad habits and indulgences of mine is the love of good food. Love of making one’s own masterful creations, and the tasting of someone else’s. The culinary gives way to the metaphysical. It is as if the metaphysics and the love of places and art started in the stomach and only then got the shape and the colour of a thought. Toscana, Veneto, Lazio, Sicilia, radicchio trevisano in padella, costata di manzo alla fiorentina, scottadito di abbacchio, risotto alle punte di asparagi, risotto al nero con le seppie, osticciata di melanzane ai formaggi... it sounds like the epic verses of the third section of the Divine Comedy being proclaimed aloud. This is my culinary home, the Roman Empire spreading toward the south and the east, adding the Dalmatian islands to its provinces, crossing the Balkans, and reaching the Orient. The Mediterranean is not only the cradle of Western civilisation, but also the cradle of gastronomy. Great chefs have always been on an equal footing with philosophers, epic poets, orators, and generals. The angel seems to be looking homeward…