If you ever get an invitation to a Futurist Dinner Party, you should be afraid. Be very, very afraid. The Futurist Cookbook, written by Italian Futurist poet F.T. Marinetti in 1932, contains recipes that are more amusing than edible. At the time, Marinetti wanted to propose a complete break from the past, catapulting Italy into the modern age both artistically and culinarily. So when we held a Futurist dinner party at our house recently, we used a simple work-around to avoid serving something downright offensive to the taste buds.
Our brave guests even wore their pajamas, as instructed in the above invitation we sent out. It was designed to mimic Fortunato Depero's classic Futurist design, shown here:
In addition to Depero and Marinetti, the Futurists included artists such as Boccioni, Russolo, Balla and Selta. Their definition of Futurism is very complex. In the below drawing, Marinetti attempts to chart the meaning of Futurism and associated movements:
Image courtesy Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
We will not attempt to explain Futurism here, but we can tell you a bit about The Futurist Cookbook. The classic Futurist parties were experiments in assaulting peoples' expectations of food and dining. For example, the "tactile dinner party" involved everyone wearing pajamas made of different touchable materials such as cork, silk, velvet, paper or sandpaper. Blindfolded in the dark, guests were instructed to choose a dining companion based on touch alone. The lights would then be turned back on so everyone would be shocked by who they had chosen to eat with.
Fortunately, we did not pull antics like this on our guests! We chose a simple appetizer called "Intuitive Antipasto". It was a little orange rind basket containing a standard Italian antipasto: grilled peppers, olives, cheese, etc. The orange gave the olives and salami a lovely citrus aroma.
It is easy to halve and then scrape out the pulp if you use navel oranges. You can then reserve the pulp of the oranges and use it for something else.
The recipe called for hiding little notes inside the orange baskets, which could be any Futurist motto such as "Live Dangerously" or "Futurism is an anti-historical movement." Instead, because many of the recipes for entrees were downright inedible, we enclosed a note describing what our guests were NOT going to be served that evening. This proved to be a good work-around, as it was amusing and very much in the Futurist spirit to arrive at a dinner party and be told what you were not going to eat.
Other bizarre dishes in the book included veal sprinkled with powdered chocolate, trout wrapped in calves' livers, and ice cream with hard-boiled eggs in it. So for our entree, we served meat and potatoes. That way we directly countered our guests' expectations of dining, by serving them the most simple, widely-available food around. (But we couldn't resist throwing in a bit of homemade chimichurri sauce to spice things up!)
For dessert it was back into Futurism mode, as several of the cookbook's desserts were do-able. We made a dish called "Italian Breasts in the Sunshine". It was simply two adorable mounds of almond paste with a strawberry on top. As in life, the women selected to have smaller breasts while the men at the table took the large ones.
There was another noteworthy dessert in the book called "Man and A Woman at Midnight". We were a little too modest to serve this one. But you can get the idea from a helpful sketch Marinetti included:
In sum, the Futurists were a lot of fun, but if you get invited to one of these parties you should play it safe and eat before going.
