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Salvador Dali’s Cookbook Is Getting Re-Released

Take a look into the culinary passions of the surrealist Salvador Dali with his 1973 cookbook Les Diners de Gala.

Les Diners de GalaIf you happen to conveniently be a lover of the art of surrealist Salvador Dalí and culinary arts as well, then you should be looking forward to the re-release of his very surreal cookbook. Les Diners de Gala was inspired by the extravagant dinner parties Dali and his wife and muse Gala threw during the 1970s. Even though it was originally published in French in 1973, the book was translated into English by Dali’s aide, Captain J. Peter Moore.

The book is all you expect from Dali, but at same time it is not. While it contains several surrealist illustrations drawn by Dali himself, as well as portrait photograph of Dali in his iconic mustache standing near fancy dinner tables, it is actually a practical cookbook with 136 illustrated recipes.

But being a fan of Salvador Dali himself is not enough to read this book. As you might understand, the artworks of Dali and his depiction of the meals might put you off and make you lose your appetite for good, for it contains some very graphic illustrations like a bird with a toothy human mouth and a toothbrush as a tail. Les Diners de Gala spread

When it comes to the recipes themselves however, the book is surprisingly well written and very practical. It speaks in a very conversational tone, guiding you through the steps towards a delightful meal, without getting as weird as you’d expect from Dali. But it does get weird sometimes. For example, one of the chapters is introduced with a sentence that goes, “the specter of death creates supreme delights, salivary expectations, and this is why the greats of gastronomical refinements consists in eating ‘cooked and living beings.”

The book consists of 12 chapters, with seafood, meat and vegetarian recipes, and even chapters on snails, frogs and one named aphrodisiacs.

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