Cooking in Maximum Security

Cooking in Maximum Security was compiled by Matteo Guidi, working with people detained in the high surveillance sections of Italian prisons, through a continuous exchange of letters between 2009 and 2013.Conceived in 2009, it was developed in person and via letter over three years and involved approximately thirty inmates, most of whom have life sentences, living in six maximum security penitentiaries throughout Italy (three in the north, one in the centre and two in the south).This book explains the methods and strategies prisoners use to cook in their cells with few available resources. Making kitchen tools before one can even begin to gather ingredients is a priority in this cookbook. In addition to identifying the necessary utensils, this book also describes how to construct them. Simple objects acquire a whole new value. Each list of ingredients, in fact, is preceded by a list of necessary tools. Their construction and uses are described and illustrated: a broom handle becomes a rolling pin, shoelaces tie up rolled pancetta for seasoning, a television set produces the heat necessary for the rising of pizza and bread dough in the otherwise chilly cells, cupboards and stools are transformed into ovens.This book is more than a manual for discovering simple, hearty recipes; it speaks of prison, specifically of life-imprisonment. If food is communication, herein, a door opens onto an unexpected channel, thus stimulating curiosity. Life-sentence prisoners combine formulas, giving shape to the illusion of a normality that is pursued but unattainable.