Portrait of a man looking directly at the camera. He has a beard and greyish hair and is wearing a patterned red scarf. — Matteo Guidi

An extremely unlikely source (see note 3) tipped me off to the existence of Cooking in Maximum Security. In some respects, it is completely ordinary; a book of recipes — Starters, First Courses et cetera — along with handy tips for making the dishes. In others, it is eye-opening, because all the recipes, and the inventions necessary to make them, were contributed by prisoners in Italian maximum security prisons. Not only that, but cooking is an essential and integral part of the prisoners’ everyday lives. Matteo Guidi, an anthropologist and artist who teaches in Italy and Spain, guided the process of compiling the book.

Notes

Matteo Guidi has built a website for Cooking in Maximum Security that gives a lot more information.
Matteo’s site has purchase details, but you might do better going directly to Half Letter Press.
It was Cory Doctorow’s fabulous Pluralistic that sent me in search of Matteo Guidi.
Banner and cover images by Mario Trudu, taken from the book.
Here is the transcipt.

Huffduff it