Cucinare in massima sicurezza (Cooking in Maximum Security) is a cookbook explains culinary methods which apply the limited available resources found within cells.
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 the country (three in the north, one in the centre and two in the south).
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. And through the rhythms of the kitchen, they teach us the tempo of patience, but with a specific variation: here, it is the “forced” and “necessary” patience necessary for survival [Francesca de Carolis, Writer].
Cooking in Maximum Security was first published in Italy in 2013 [Stampa Alternativa / Nuovi Equilibri, Viterbo, 2013]. This new edition [Half Letter Press, Chicago, 2025] is the first English translation of the book. Re-reading the present work after over ten years, there is one aspect that strikes me even more than it did then. It has to do with one of the main characteristics that this recipe book has always exhibited: while reading the recipes, one tries to picture their author, his activities, his wily doings inside the cell. And then naturally, one tries to imagine the person: who he might be, where he is imprisoned, the fittings of his cell and what brought him there. This is one of the key differences that separates this recipe book from other contemporary cookbooks: without the ability to take photos in prison, the reader is invited to imagine the prepared meal on a plate.
If you want the new english edition, you can contact by mail here!
Otherwise, you can find the second italian edition for Meltemi Publisher here.
