*Cooking in Maximum Security* is a slim volume of prisoners' recipes and improvised cooking equipment, a testament to the ingenuity of a network of prisoners in Italy's maximum security prisons:
halfletterpress.com/cooking-in…
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Pluralistic: Cooking in Maximum Security (24 Nov 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Pluralistic: Cooking in Maximum Security (24 Nov 2025)Cory Doctorow (Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow)


Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
*Cooking in Maximum Security* has a new English translation from Half Letter Press, who also publish the classic *Prisoner's Inventions*, which is one of my favorite books of all time, a collection of keenly observed, beautifully drawn material improvisations from America's prisons:
pluralistic.net/2021/06/09/kin…
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Pluralistic: 09 Jun 2021 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow (Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Prison cookbooks are a genre unto themselves, with "underground" classics like *Jailhouse Cookbook*:
jailhousecookbook.com/
And slick coffee-table books like *Prison Ramen*:
eater.com/23900359/gastropod-i…
But *Cooking in Maximum Security* drills down much deeper on the *method* than those other books, elevating the makerish improvisation of the chefs whose work it reproduces.
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In ‘Prison Ramen,’ Author Gustavo Alvarez Wants to Put Inmates’ Culinary Ingenuity on Full Display
Claudia Geib (Eater)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
They explain how to make an oven out of a wooden stool lined with cigarette foil and draped with heavy blankets, into which a small gas burner is introduced:
cookinginmaximumsecurity.com/t…
Or how to turn a toothbrush handle and the razor blade from a pencil-sharpener into an all-purpose paring knife:
cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-l4sjfh…
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COOKING IN MAXIMUM SECURITY
leroipsum@gmail.com (COOKING IN MAXIMUM SECURITY)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
These field-expedient gadget improvisations are *incredibly* satisfying. They have the vibe of a good episode of Scrapheap Challenge, or the high-stakes duct-tape ingenuity of Apollo 13.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
And while these recipes and build notes were collected in the 2010s, the pencil/charcoal illustrations have a classic 1970s feel, like the illustrations out of the *Moosewood Cookbook* or *The Joy of Sex*. If you love the kind of clever repurposings that filled the pages of *Make* magazine, you'll *love* this.
Plus, the food sounds *incredible*. Mouth-watering. Fresh bread whose dough was warmed and risen by setting it atop the heat-radiating surface of a CRT television!
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
One thing that sets *Cooking in Maximum Security* apart from other prison cookbooks is the unique character of Italian maximum security prisons, in which visitors are allowed to bring a fairly large variety of goods to inmates, and where the commissary is stocked with an incredible variety of basic ingredients, including things like goat and beef livers (the book reproduces an entire commissary menu, with prices, as an appendix).
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Prisoners have access to beer and wine, and find endless uses for old beer cans. The book also drops in casual clues about life in an Italian prison, for example, when it suggests getting your wooden stirrer by taking down a crucifix and using that.
*Cooking in Maximum Security* arose out of a project called "MoCa" (a play on the essential moka coffee maker that is the most versatile and widely used tool in this book).
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Prisoners met with, and corresponded with, outside helpers who put together the entire volume. One collaborator, Mario, died shortly after sending a long letter (reproduced in an appendix) from solitary confinement, and this letter, along with other notes interspersed through the recipes, give a brilliant anthropological account of life in Italian maximum security prisons.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The MoCa project isn't done - they've embarked on "Phase II," which will collect recipes from Spanish prisoners.
It's a remarkable book, and an essential companion to *Prisoner's Inventions*.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I'm on a tour with my new book, the international bestseller *Enshittification*!
Catch me next in #Toronto, #SanDiego and #Seattle!
Full schedule with dates and links at:
pluralistic.net/tour
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Pluralistic: Announcing the Enshittification tour (30 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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