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Eat Me: Love, Sex and the Art of Eating
Alexandra Antonioni
Sex and the City meets Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver in this delicious combination of love, sex and the art of eating. This is the ultimate book for the those with an appreciation for the mouth-wateringly scrumptious and sensual.Sex and the City meets the culinary goddess within, in this delicious offering on love, sex and the art of eating.Alexandra Antonioni argues that food plays a significant role in the seduction and binding of individuals, and offers a collection of musings, anecdotes, quotes and recipes to enhance the smooth path of love.Alexandra takes us on a journey through the highs and lows of modern-day relationships in terms of food, from first date encounters to the inevitable tv dinners. She extols the virtues of love, sex and food whilst providing menus, relationship advice and personal anecdotes on various love-related subjects.We now live in a world of serial but temporary monogamy, where a smorgasbord of endless possibility exists, where a broken heart is no longer terminal but easily and endlessly restorable, rejuvenated and reinvented with the helping hand of a culinary masterpiece or two.Today we seek not so much Mr. Right as Mr. Right Now, thus each relationship can be argued to exist somewhere in:"The Beginning" "The Middle" " The End"Each stage is described by Alexandra in humorous and toe-curlingly familiar detail, coupling the well-know art of love with the less well-known art of culinary bliss, offering advice, experiences and menus not just for the seduction dinner (Beginning) or the comfort food zone (End), but a delicious selection of post-coital snacks, lazy Sunday breakfasts and morning after brunches for all those stages in between.
DEDICATION (#ulink_f29e253f-ae78-5c88-8b6b-f24272d969c9)
For my family, who have supported me through every Beginning, Middle and End and without whom my life would be a very empty place indeed.
And for the next generation: James, Max, Cristian and Sacha.
CONTENTS
COVER (#u42b27e11-ce39-5e17-8a80-a0c55dc3f74c)
TITLE PAGE (#u195067ce-7164-5578-82da-ff8a705b3991)
DEDICATION (#ulink_1802e601-584e-5b2f-86fa-6e889d1c6ecf)
FOREWORD (#ulink_55489481-fac9-5765-a931-87a3c3c9237b)
INTRODUCTION (#ulink_77f521e4-8b0b-5294-b4f2-e0766de01160)
THE BEGINNING, THE MIDDLE, THE END (#ulink_c826723f-2dd7-5f14-9b9c-45a95af54aca)
THE BEGINNING (#ulink_013f1fb5-b251-5187-a642-0fed6316b7d1)
Attraction (#ulink_d29125c6-fd5f-5b7d-9053-70b083d8195d)
First Dates (#ulink_0c9b59e1-b9cf-5fca-bca7-569dff4fc566)
One-Night Stands (#ulink_2ea11362-2aff-5f6c-9232-092b24dfeb89)
Infatuation (#ulink_1d75da40-03eb-52d3-a452-6dcddf54733c)
The Seduction Dinners (#ulink_206f6e19-7c1e-5c6a-ade0-978981fc720c)
Aphrodisiacs (#ulink_1b8b7298-e96a-5d09-a56a-7eabedece7f6)
Pink Cloud (#ulink_e664bac6-a377-5cb9-b40d-d93a0057ce08)
Easy Like Sunday Morning (#ulink_d43de3dd-02a1-533e-8743-63242c616362)
Room Service (#ulink_c5c65bfa-c8fa-5a82-b81c-4ae47c144f3e)
The Mini-Break (#ulink_23314711-70a4-5a27-ad0e-75517c7d12ab)
Indoor Picnics (#ulink_1225a95a-0c60-502b-81df-684770a76a4a)
Meet Me After Work and Bring a Toothbrush (#ulink_53a60da4-0905-5f07-9c55-68f0a15455dd)
Rude Food (#ulink_8b678113-33b8-50e1-9925-333fae59b385)
Those Three Little Words (#ulink_ee8a33b1-0cef-5d57-b1e0-1765c29029b1)
Your First Quarrel (#ulink_6bedc7e1-defa-51c6-8f50-035b94cfbe95)
The End of the Beginning (#ulink_0f61330d-4e92-584f-9907-e3e69c428e86)
THE MIDDLE (#ulink_58bc33f8-6c64-528b-a42a-82ec7498214d)
7
Heaven (#ulink_20f23b10-e489-5e91-b882-ba07d69cac99)
You Are Cordially Invited To … (#ulink_eebfac3e-825c-57ce-86df-09328bfc70be)
Pet Names (#ulink_5718663d-0166-535f-b98b-8b59dd71e810)
Forever Friends (#ulink_66f380e0-2a12-5d98-ba91-ac2790c0ff58)
Domestic Bliss? (#ulink_34b1ecc5-d9b6-58d2-9b8e-08d2b4f79497)
Soul Mates (#ulink_108433f7-462d-573d-b17e-92039bc7b29f)
Eating al Fresco (#ulink_c0790c41-700f-5d6e-841e-af5e6ab764ad)
I Don’t Like Mondays (#ulink_4489b7ac-a97b-5b4e-8bb3-c6053b8b7bb4)
Welcome to Lola’s (#ulink_cc6b096b-5af1-5b88-b694-84a60d9e7335)
La Famiglia (#ulink_cc9b627d-8e92-5003-95f8-c2418bad31ee)
Home Alone (#ulink_d27539f8-f305-5e3e-ad5b-248826f2d02e)
In Sickness and in Health (#ulink_b03a2005-5fac-5900-bbf2-7e76c20cb18e)
Reality Check (#ulink_2767c8f8-37e3-5b0d-99f0-a9bd407aafb6)
THE END (#ulink_4e8cbe19-55ea-564a-8662-b5bbeaf1ab5b)
Thunder & Lightning (#ulink_f605fcbf-ec83-5629-9634-0a61b10f6159)
The End is Nigh (#ulink_f3358553-72e9-5861-9712-79013f691dd2)
Once More With Feeling … (#ulink_24ee5b70-f0d7-5036-ac6b-2c549b5a6d48)
The Last Dance … (#ulink_f28de819-65d1-51f6-8af1-24b8a39af2d0)
Food Glorious Food (#ulink_de6457b7-9da4-5e7f-b961-06e878d321c4)
The Six Stages of the End (#ulink_6e856e99-13d9-5aaa-8e4c-f0015c8e217c)
Ouch … It Hurts … (#ulink_dc655be5-1a0e-5cc9-9941-24fe37cc0701)
All You Need is Love … (#ulink_c7faa4fa-cb62-500d-aedc-6cee7bdbffaf)
POSTSCRIPT (#ulink_849fefb3-5890-54ea-b5ad-7165c52a2190)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#ulink_53e765cf-6469-5fa0-8401-9a9edd39129a)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#ulink_92b7f5c9-5d6f-5530-a497-55c71c57a08b)
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_a8ef24a0-cbb9-5f62-afc1-18c769c7f4c8)
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#ulink_d5693049-8289-589b-bc1d-807762b03af0)
FOREWORD (#ulink_55d30995-4bae-58cc-a55c-60e37a90cb29)
By Marco Pierre White
Quite simply the joy of Eat Me is that it extols the virtues of Love, Sex and Food, three things everyone has experience of, and that people just love talking about.
Food has, throughout the ages, been synonymous with hedonistic pleasure, with finding love, falling in love and sometimes losing love. Eat Me demonstrates with an informed, seductive and cheeky approach how to marry food with the various stages of romantic relationships. Nothing is left to chance, from first date dinners, postcoital snacks, meeting the future in-laws and making up after your first big row, right through to fabulous recipes for comfort food should it all go horribly wrong. I’ve been there and I’m quite sure you have too.
Nothing inspires romance quite like food. The cunningly pre-meditated but seemingly effortless way that Alex recommends the seduction and subsequent nurturing of a lover through cooking just can’t fail. She uses her kitchen in much the same way a spider uses her web.
Her reminiscences of first-date disasters during supposedly romantic dinners as well as her mischievous take on the nuances of relationships had me roaring with laughter as I recalled some equally excruciating but, with hindsight, bittersweet encounters from my own past.
Along with great menus and some truly honest relationship advice there are moments of déjà vu for us all as we smirk knowingly at some of the insights into the ongoing battle of sexes. To quote a line from Eat Me: ‘Men are from Earth, Women are from Earth. Deal with it’.
Have fun with Eat Me. Open a bottle of wine, put some music on, get into the kitchen and start connecting with the culinary siren you have within. Be spiritually and emotionally nourished, and most of all enjoy.
Marco Pierre White
May 2005
INTRODUCTION (#ulink_35fd81c5-49dd-5367-a126-70feb33ddd7a)
Prior to starting our journey through the mesmerising alchemy that stems from the marriage of food and love, I should like to give you a little background information about myself. So here are a few pertinent details about where I’ve been and what I’ve done, which should afford you a better understanding of the author, my credentials and the experiences that have led me to write this book.
I was born in London to Italian parents sometime in the early- to mid-sixties. (I don’t like to be too precise about my age, female prerogative and all that, let’s just say that I’ve been around long enough to have learnt about the harsh realities of life, but not so long that I am no longer able to be excited, amazed and enraptured by it.)
Given that my parents owned a restaurant, the Bongusto (which as kids we re-christened the Gone Busto, naturally out of earshot of my father), I was steeped in a foodie culture from a very young age. I have warm and vivid memories of ‘going down the shop’, as we used to call it, to help out in the school holidays. It was not unusual for there to be three generations of Antonionis in attendance at any one time: my parents, occasionally my grandfather (although he came to eat and generally observe proudly from the sidelines) and we three kids – my older sister and baby brother and me.
We were all working towards the same goal: a successful family restaurant serving first-rate, home-cooked Italian food in a cosy, friendly atmosphere, affording the kind of welcome and familiarity that comes from seeing the same faces over and over again. Many of these people became an integral part of our extended family and even today, long after my father has retired, they still have a place in our hearts.
Having spent the better part of the school holidays and weekends working in the Bongusto it was only natural that I should grow up with a leaning towards hospitality as a career. Having learnt the basics I spread my wings, and in the early Eighties, newly married at the tender age of 20, I moved to Hong Kong with my husband. There I lived and worked for many years managing some truly fabulous restaurants, amongst which was Grissini at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, the brand new and utterly gorgeous diamond in the Grand Hyatt crown.
Grissini was a world away from the Bongusto and, unbeknownst to the hierarchy of Swiss hoteliers that employed me, I was totally inexperienced in the running of a fine dining restaurant. To say that I talked up the family business and my hospitality experience is an understatement – it was a far cry from the family-run, all-day-breakfast café/restaurant of my youth and an extremely steep learning curve. But learn I did; the young, gifted Italian chef at Grissini was a genius and through this book I hope to do him justice in passing on his knowledge of food and its ability to seduce.
Grissini was a highly romantic restaurant in a wonderful setting overlooking Hong Kong harbour; floor-to-ceiling windows afforded fabulous views of the South China Sea. It was a heady time indeed for little Alex Antonioni from North London, to suddenly be presiding over such an exalted dining room full to the rafters with the beautiful people: witnessing their romantic assignations; first dates, reunions, proposals, celebrations, secret trysts and, of course, the occasional tearful parting.
I watched and learned.
It is a fact that every night in a restaurant, any restaurant anywhere in the world, a theatre production takes place: the guests are the star characters and the staff and food their producers and props. Every night there was drama, every night a new lesson in love and life.
Unfortunately, my marriage was not to last and after my divorce I left Hong Kong and returned to London. After a period of settling in, the advent of a fabulous new career in restaurant PR and being very much a single girl about town, I ‘serially monogomised’ for the first time in my life, enjoying a succession of very agreeable one- to two-year relationships.
Despite the fact that the guys I became involved with turned out to be Mr Right Now rather than Mr Right and the liaisons came to their own natural conclusion, I wouldn’t have changed a single thing. I loved, laughed and learned a lot; there is a lot to be said for being an independent, single, successful, commitment-shy woman. The world was now my oyster.
I left for Singapore in the late Nineties where I worked for a couple of years writing restaurant reviews for a local newspaper. After a while the gypsy in my soul needed a change of pace (can you see a pattern forming here?), so, in a bid to reflect on my life and ‘find myself’, I headed for Australia with no job and no idea of what I was going to do once I got there.
It was there, having been totally captivated by the inspirational Australian food culture, that I first had the idea to write a book incorporating the two things that were so pivotal in my life: Love and Food. I wanted to convey to women how easy it was to seduce a man with food in much the same way that a spider uses her web to entrap her prey.
I spent a year researching the shift in attitudes and other people’s perspectives of the sometimes cold, hard world of modern-day dating. It would seem that things have changed a lot and, armed with this information and drawing on my, it has to be said extensive, personal experience and a strong belief about the nurturing effect of food on romantic love, Eat Me was born.
This book is best described as a tongue-in-cheek, sometimes searingly honest and occasionally painful journey through the highs and lows of a modern-day relationship for serial romantics who adore food. But, if used correctly, Eat Me can also help transform even the most inexperienced and reluctant cook into a culinary siren; one who appreciates the importance of enhancing and nurturing relationships through food and the cooking of it.
I would love to hear about your romantic foodie moments and any ideas or suggestions you may have. Please contact me at eatmemail@yahoo.co.uk (mailto:eatmemail@yahoo.co.uk)
THE BEGINNING, THE MIDDLE, THE END (#ulink_918cea98-b0d5-59e7-af98-4fe55e52ac73)
(Manners of a Modern Romance)
I’m not shooting for a successful relationship.At this point I’m just looking for something that will prevent me from throwing myself in front of a bus.I’m keeping my expectations very, very low.I am just looking for a mammal. That’s my bottom line.And I’m really very flexible on that too.
LUCILLE BALL
So, my fellow modern-day romantic gourmand, if you have bought this book you are one of the many amongst us who appreciate the unbridled joy that is love combined with the pleasure of all things oral.
Love and Food – the ultimate pairing of the senses. What more could a mere mortal ask for … ok, maybe a pair of vintage Manolos, but, hey, can you eat them?
Welcome, then, to Eat Me, where culinary possibility flirts with romantic probability. Exciting, sensual and utterly blissful, a stimulating and deeply fulfilling manner in which to woo and be wooed, Eat Me is neither cookbook nor love story but a journey through modern romantic love (on a full stomach) from start to finish.
Yes, yes already, I know, I said finish.
Before we start on this journey, it is my duty to explain to you the three stages of Love in the game that is modern-day dating.
Think Bridget Jones, Sex and the City, 9½ Weeks (the fridge scene!).
Time to wake up and smell the testosterone. Baby, times they are a-changing. Our generation is dealing with a completely different set of rules, which we are playing by ear and making up as we go along. The days of ‘Forsaking All Others Forever and Ever, Amen’ are but a cloud of well-trodden, soggy confetti in the fairytale nuptials of our wildest imaginations. Divorce is on the up; true love is proving to be more elusive than ever. It is a bona fide serial-dating, bed-hopping jungle out there.
Deal with it.
We live in a world of serial, but temporary, monogamy; a smorgasbord of endless possibility, where a broken heart is no longer terminal but instead easily and endlessly restorable. It happens the moment yet another cutie with the right combination of looks, style and, if we are lucky, cash, appears. He/she will have that certain something, that je ne sais quoi that enables him/her to turn our heads and make our bruised and battered little hearts beat, to the sound of their drum, that little bit faster.
Hey presto! We are no longer heartbroken, actually we are the opposite: heartsick, horny and in lust. In fact, off, once again, with the fairies.
Today we seek not so much Mr Right as Mr Right Now, thus a staggering percentage of relationships exist in the sphere that is:
