In.gredienti: Le Calandre Massimiliano and Raffaele Alajmo
With its cover of squiggles and dots in bright primary colours set against a stark white background, In.gredienti might easily be mistaken for a book about modern art rather than cuisine. The book's contents add to the confusion, with pages devoted to more splashes of colour and line drawings. It isn't until you read the handwriting next to the drawings that you realise that rather than being an explanation of abstract art, it describes the compositions of complex dishes. The authors - Massimiliano and Raffaele Alajmo - are the brothers behind the Michelin three-star Ristorante Le Calandre, near Padua, Italy.
The book contains a few dishes that can be made fairly easily and quickly but most of the recipes require a lot of skill and time. There are chapters on powders, layers, liquidity, tactility and smoke, with dishes such as capellini in hen broth, parmigiano sauce and parsley foam; smoked taglioni with butter, anchovies, speck and egg yolk petals; polenta and milk (which requires the making of corn crisps, cornmeal 'tiles', creamed polenta and milk gelato); and spaghetti with cream of the sea (frozen shrimp cream, frozen langoustine cream and crustacean sauce).
The book was originally published in Italian and some of the translations are awkward: one dish is described as having a 'simple, puerile flavour' for palates 'ready to renounce the gustative architecture of simple comprehension'.