Cooking with Machiavelli

Ommatidia's recipe for "Bolognese Machiavelli" is a delightfully savage bit of cookery:

1. Arrange to have garlic and onions cast into hot oil.
2. The carrot and celery you must divide against themselves. Ground beef, too, shall turn upon the burner; crush any coherent resistance with a spoon of wood. Sautee until no hint of blood remains to stain your hands.
3. Perhaps, in a dark place without witnesses, the tomato shall meet with the knife.

(via JWZ)

(Image: Niccolo Machiavelli, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from robert_scarth's photostream and P6123040, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from joyosity's photostream)

• [Joseph Francis]

  Machiavelli saved the world more than once. I’d love to tell you more, but it’s still classified.

  http://davinciautomata.wordpress.com/2007/03/26/a-clockpunk-screenplay/

• [angrydroid]

  Brilliant. I once knew someone who had something called the Marquis De Sade’s Cookbook or something like that. Was never able to find it again but it had some amazing recipes. One that I recall involved giving quails to the guests and have them stuff their own peppercorns up the bird’s you-know-what.

• [Toby Fee]

  The author’s name is Brendan Adkins. For several years he posted very short sci-fi stories at http://www.ommatidia.org/ but stopped very recently, making it funny that this should go viral now.

• [BenStroup]

  Delightful, but Machiavelli wasn’t really about wanton acts of cruelty. The carrot and celery are too weak to rule separately, and the tomato is a drunken lout, beholden to the whims of fortune. These are foods who wanted to rule, but couldn’t handle the reality of power. With a little instruction, though, they could unite Italy!

  “Great Statesman or Greatest Statesman?”

  • [Teller]

    Agree. Someone’s got him confused with Torquemada.

• [Adrien Murphy]

  Reminds me a bit of the Vegan Black Metal Chef cooking show:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeZlih4DDNg

• [yadayada]

  Complete title:  Cooking with Machiavelli: An evening at the Borgias.

• [Daemonworks]

  Actually, Macchiavelli was more in favour of a well-run republic. “The Prince” was a comissioned work.

• [dcm1101]

  Don’t forget Jean-Paul Sartre’s cookbook: http://pvspade.com/Sartre/cookbook.html

• [Scott Lahti]

  Bolognese Wittgenstein: whereof one cannot cook, thereof one must skip dinner.

  Bolognese Logical Positivist, aka Bolognese Viennese (“look at these”, below): chop all ingredients relentlessly. Leave the actual cooking, with an air-quoting sneer, to the kitchen “metaphysicians” (Cf. Bolognese Snuffy Smith: subject all ingredients to chop-chop-chop-chop-choppin’ with all o’ your might – yay! Then cook in enormous outdoor pot suspended atop great balls of fire, goodness gracious).

  Bolognese Popper: serve publicly and open-source the recipe, the better that other cooks might, discovering some of the claimed ingredients to be unsuccessful in their own home versions, subject the original to ongoing revision.

  Bolognese Blake: for the beef, substitute free-range lamb, cooked in the chimney. Save a strained portion for baby.

  Bolognese Buckley: use the family oil liberally, hold recipe in clipboard, include organ meat – especially eye and tongue, sizzled till they dart and flash in the pan – and if the results taste queer, next time omit the Vidalia onion.

  Bolognese Goethe: while your housemaid makes the sauce you discovered on your trip to Italy, make a wager with her that you’ll have your long-sought devil’s-food cake baked in time for dessert, then marry her.

  Bolognese d’Annunzio: have your kitchen-girl bring out for the occasion your very special serving dish, which will lend a whole new meaning to “skullery” maid.

  Bolognese Kierkegaard: there are three stages to the cooking. If your guest is your girlfriend, make her wait for her food – then tell her you’ve changed your mind about dinner after all, as you are not worthy to cook for her anyway.

  Bolognese Max Stirner: the recipe, in its uniqueness, is mine, and, since the world and all its ingredients exist solely as my food – or perhaps as mere spooks of my imagination – may consist of anything and everything I crave right now.

  Bolognese Anne Elk: no, Max, the recipe, what it is, is mine, and – excuse me [coughs] – requires brontosaurus meat, cut thin at both ends of each chunk and very, very thick in the middle.

  Bolognese Spinoza: for best possible results, ensure the beef is of the toughest, and cooked only slightly.

  Bolognese Derrida: impossible to cook a coherent, digestible dish, given the Death of the Cook.

  Bolognese Utilitarian: feel free to include, with or in place of the beef, battery-farmed ground man, to the extent the aggregate enjoyment of the diners+dined-upon can be shown to thereby be greater.

  Bolognese Balzac: serve with an XXL pot of coffee. For each guest.

  Bolognese Fat Strong-Boned Third-Grader à la playgrounde à recesse: “Heheheh, he said ‘Balzac’; Chinese, Japanese, Bolognese, extra cheese”