They promised us a banquet and what a banquet it proved to be! Inspired by recipes Anna Del Conte collected on gastronomic journey through Piedmont and Liguria, two of the six regions featured in her recent publication The Painter, The Cook and L'Arte di Sacla', it consisted of five courses - six if you count the aperitivo of mixed olives and Sacla's bei Tippi.
The Sacla' Italian Food Lovers' Banquet took place in The Great Hall, Christ Church, now famed for its Harry Potter connections. You climb to it up a 16th-century stone staircase with a wonderful vaulted roof. All very atmospheric. It was such fun watching the reaction of people there for the first time and seeing it laid out for a banquet. Some actually gasped with delight.
The banquet, sponsored by Sacla', took place during the Oxford Literary Festival and was organised by the Guild of Food Writers, as a follow-up to their AGM which also took place at Christ Church. Anna Del Conte, one of the greatest living experts on Italian food, is a member of the guild.
Born in Milan, she came to London to learn English in 1949 and has lived in the UK ever since. She won acclaim for her first book, Portrait of Pasta, and became the first cookery writer in England to specialise in Italian food. She has written some of the most authoritative, popular and acclaimed books on Italian food, which have won several awards including some from the Guild of Food Writers and the Accademia Italiana della Cucina. In 1994 Anna was awarded the Verdicchio d'Oro prize for her contribution to the diffusion of the right and documented knowledge of Italian food and cooking.
The Painter, The Cook and L'Arte di Sacla', which inspired the banquet, is illustrated by the painter Val Archer, who travelled with Anna through some relatively little known areas of Italy - Piedmont, Veneto, Liguria, Le Marche, Puglia and Sardina. Although the book contains recipes, it is not a cookery book in the accepted sense. The journey it details covers just six regions out of 20. as they represent the cooking of the northern, central and southern parts of the peninsula. Recipes have been chosen because they are the most representative of the local cooking of that region.
Sourcing the ingredients was not a problem, thanks to the Sacla' team, who even managed to come up with a very rare cheese, Montebore, produced from the milk of mixed breeds of both sheep and cows. This superb cheese from Liguria, which dates back to the Middle Ages, is seldom exported. One taste tells you why. Like so many Italian cheeses, it embodies the evidence of centuries of thought and experimentation. It is just too good to share.
The dish of roasted vegetables served as the antipasto, which included peppers and artichokes was equally good. It came with a selection of cold meats. The platters laid before us were gobbled up within minutes. So was the trofie liguri with Sacla' pesto and Parmigiano Reggiano, another dish from Liguria, which proved particularly popular, if somewhat filling. Trofie is a pasta normally made with flour and water but no eggs and rolled by hand into squiggy little shapes. It is another Italian ingredient that if not home made, is sometimes difficult to source.
The main course was Brasato al Dolcetto, which translated means braised beef in Dolcetto, a red wine that comes mainly from the North West regions. It's known as 'the sweet one', though it is seldom sweet. This dish was essentially a delicious pot roast with a red wine sauce. It came with polenta and green beans. As Anna del Conte says in her book, brasato - a festive convivial dish which can be made with different local wines - is in northern Italy what roast beef is in Great Britain. She obtained the recipe from Pina Fassi, the chef-patron of the famous restaurant Gener Neuve in Asti.
The pudding course was an ice cream flavoured with rose syrup and served with a delectable selection of home-made Italian biscuits. Regrettably, this was the only dish which failed to live up to its name. I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to detect the rose syrup flavour in a blind tasting. That said, it was creamy and sweet.
The chefs at Christ Church had been working on this menu for some weeks, under the leadership of head chef Roland Depit. This was a feast that had to be worked out like a military campaign and each dish was prepared several times in the days before the banquet, to ensure that they got it right. As all the meals were plated up in the kitchen, and then had to travel to the Great Hall by lift, nothing could be left to chance. Everything cooked had to be something that would not fall or crumble if the lift vibrated suddenly. Naturally, Anna worked closely with them at all stages to ensure that the final menu was balanced and representative of her book and the Italian cuisine.
All their hard work and attention to detail paid off. It proved a superb experience, which I topped off in the evening by joining a group of food writers at the Nut Tree, Murcott, for dinner at the invitation of the award-winning food writer Clarissa Hyman, who counts Italian and Sicilian food among her special interests. Clarrisa had arranged for three talented Italian food writers to visit the UK and attend the Italian banquet. We spent the evening introducing our Italian friends to the delights of chef/patron Michael North's excellent British offerings and toasted the success of the banquet with the best of Oxfordshire beer - Old Hooky, brewed in Hook Norton.
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