Bread Is Gold: Extraordinary Meals With Ordinary Ingredients

"We chanted the unsung values of recovering recipes and all those discarded, undervalued, and neglected ingredients," writes Massimo Bottura of the process by which he began to use the Milan Food Expo of 2015 to focus attention on putting more food on the tables of disadvantaged people. He eventually founded a food kitchen that still serves meals today, often serving dishes created by the likes of Daniel Humm, Gastón Acurio, Carlo Cracco, Michel Troisgros, Matt Orlando, and more than forty other chefs.

The dishes are beautifully presented, though they rely on humble ingredients that are widely available: meatballs with smoked eggplant, toasted chickpeas, and eggplant condiment from Alain Ducasse; Spanish tortilla with cold lentil salad from Juan Mari Arzak; veal and potato stew from Virgilio Martínez; bread pudding with cantalope sorbet from Yannick Alléno. This is a real inspiration to anyone looking to kickstart their own imaginative approach to utilizing what might otherwise be thrown away.

Flexibind with jacket. Color photographs throughout.