Matteo Guidi, Cucinare in massima sicurezza, 2025

Cooking in Maximum Security is a work created with inmates in high-security sections of Italian prisons, slowly developed between 2009 and 2013 through a continuous exchange of letters. The book explains the strategies and methods employed in the cells to cook with the limited resources available, emphasizing not only the ingredients but also the tools necessary for the recipe’s success. Kitchen utensils, usually omitted from common recipe books, become the protagonists of the entire culinary process in this project: sometimes constructed according to precise techniques, other times simple objects used in novel ways, given new meaning. Thus, a broom handle becomes a rolling pin, shoelaces bind rolled pancetta for curing, a cupboard or stool transforms into an oven, and even a cathode ray tube television facilitates the leavening of bread or pizza dough in the very cold environments of prison cells. In the context of the kitchen, the book reinterprets the skill and ingenuity spent to improve the discouraging experience of detention, at least at the table.