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A new cookbook by a Swiss Guard shares some of Pope Francis’ and other popes’ favourite recipes.
A new cookbook by a Swiss Guard shares some of Pope Francis’ and other popes’ favourite recipes. CNS photo

You gotta eat here

By  Josephine McKenna, Religion News Service
  • November 1, 2014

VATICAN CITY - They say you can feast like a king, and now you can eat like a pope after a young chef from the Vatican’s Swiss Guards published a cookbook featuring the favourite recipes of Pope Francis and his predecessors. 

David Geisser, 24, who joined the elite Vatican security corps only a month ago, released his book, titled Buon Appetito, in Rome Oct. 21. 

The cookbook includes recipes for Francis’ favourite dishes, such as empanadas; roast sirloin, known as “colita de cuadril”; and “dulce de leche,” a milk-based Argentinian dessert that began appearing on Vatican dining tables when the Archbishop of Buenos Aires was elected Pope last year. 

But it also features one of St. John Paul II’s favourite dishes, Polish pierogi, or stuffed dumplings, and Bavarian delicacies favoured by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. 

Recipes favoured by the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, include gnocchi Vatican-style, while the prefect of the papal household, Mgsr. Georg Gaenswein, likes veal saltimbocca alla Romana. 

“A soldier can only fight and wage war when he has eaten well, and enough,” said Daniel Rudolf Anrig, the head of the Swiss Guards. “In Italy the cooking is the best in the world.” 

The book also pays tribute to the dishes favoured by the patron saints of the Swiss Guards and includes the guards’ mealtime prayers. 

The book was published in German. An Italian version is expected to be published next year. 

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