Private chef to Pope Pius V, Bartolomeo Scappi?s cookbook Opera is credited with laying the foundations of modern Italian cuisine. Beautifully illustrated, Opera is the most expensive cookery book in the world, which boasts over 1,000 recipes and demonstrates the high point of Renaissance cookery. Nearly 500 years after its publication, awardwinning food writer and presenter Antonio Carluccio travels to Italy to tell the fascinating story of the world?s first celebrity chef in Carluccio and the Renaissance Cookbook. Lush scenery and mouth-watering ingredients create a visually stunning feast with Antonio delving into recipes over 500 years old: cooking eel in Venice, porcini mushrooms in Lombardy, and stuffing a suckling pig in Rome, where he ends his journey with a banquet fit for a Pope. A combination of history and culture, Carluccio and The Renaissance Cookbook sees Carluccio embark on a pilgrimage to discover the many influences that inspired Scappi to cook ahead of his time and become known as ?Michelangelo of the kitchen?.

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Documentary