Secret love, secret recipes and secret heirs

This book might as well have been called Eat, Pray, Love – aside from the praying part. There’s not much of it, none at all infact, even though it’s set in the Vatican State late 1500s. But there is a lot of love, great love, and good food in The Chef’s Secret by Crystal King.

Is I started listening got curious, who was this Bartolomeo Scappi? Was he purely a work of fiction or was there some truth behind the story. And it turns out Scappi was the first celebrity chef. Famous for his work at the Vatican, for several popes and cardinals and for the first mega hit cook book Opera dell’arte del cusina.

Reading The Chef’s Secret is like overindulging in good food, beautiful environments, intrigues, great love and disappointed heirs. It makes me think of The Borgias, the addictive tv-series with Jeremy Irons among others.

Somehow the beauty and the rich colours from the tv-series are spilling over and giving an extra dimension to the book while reading. And it’s lovely.