Does cookery bore you these days? Do you feel like you’ve seen it all from molecular gastronomy to cooking with hay? Well here’s a cook book with a difference, one that will make the goings on at Noma, the Fat Duck or even Stockport’s very own ‘Where the Light Gets In’ look like everyday items on sale at Greggs. As Salvador Dali was as keen on elaborate dinner parties as he was at blowing our collective minds in 1973 he created Les diners de Gala a kitsch cookbook dedicated to his wife and crammed full of classic French recipes all accompanied by astounding illustrations of the finished products. Unsurprisingly the book soon became a cult publication and as rare as the beef recipes it contained within with copies being highly sought after, though more for their artistic merit than the ‘Toffee with Pine Cones’ recipes. Thanks to Taschen we can now all get a glimpse into this gastronomic galaxy where lobsters and eggs are there for practical purposes as well as metaphorical ones. It’s an incredible visual feast with the additional bonus of some of Salvador’s philosophical gems and musings peppered throughout the pages as well as an entire section dedicated to aphrodisiacs. An incredibly tasteful book in more ways than one.
Satisfy your hunger for 70s kitsch, old school French cuisine and peerless surreal art here.
