'The burnished gold of the crusts, the fragrance of sugar and cinnamon they exuded, were but preludes to the delights released from the interior when the knife broke the crust; first came the spice-laden haze, then chicken livers, hard boiled eggs, sliced ham, chicken and truffles in masses of piping hot, glistening macaroni, to which the meat juices gave an exquisite hue of suede'.
Thus does Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa describe the centrepiece dish served at the banquet hosted by Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina, in his masterpiece The Leopard.
And as soon as I read this passage, indeed the whole book, some twenty-five years ago, I wanted to taste this dish. It is, I learned subsequently, called a timaballo siciliano.
On Tuesday 25 August this year, renowned Melbourne chef Guy Grossi will produce the timaballo, along with various other delights described in The Leopard, or inspired by it, at landmark Melbourne restaurant Florentino.
If you would like to join me for the meal, you can book through the Melbourne Writers Festival website.
I'll be hosting two other dinners that week - (the following week I'll be having the waistband on my pants taken out)
At Bar Laurinha at the top end of Little Collins Street, the menu will be taken from a scene in Don Quixote in which Sancho Panza is taunted by being presented with a series of mouth-watering dishes which he is tricked out of eating. The centrepiece will be olla podrida - roughly translated as hodge-podge, a sort of super-rich Spanish cassoulet. This will be preceeded by Ameijoas a Bulhao Pato - a clam dish from Portugal named after a famous 19th century poet. The meal will be eaten long-table style and there'll be Iberian bookchat from two visiting international crime writers who live, write and set their books in Spain and Portugal. This dinner will happen on Thursday 27 August and there are still a few places left.
The third dinner, based on a story from the 1001 nights, will be served - along with readings of Arabic poetry and the music of the oud - at Rumi in East Brunswick. This proved to be a popular pick and it sold out within a few days of the festival program coming out.