Cooking with Italian Grandmothers

Cooking with Italian Grandmothers: Recipes and Stories from Tuscany to Sicily  By Jessica Theroux, Welcome Books, 2010. Hardcover. $40; 295 pages

For one year, Jessica Theroux traveled through Italy, landing in eight different regions and hunkering down in the homes of 12 remarkable home cooks. Each grandmother is reputed to be the best cook in her area, and Theroux devotes a chapter to what she learns: traditional bread ways from Rafaella in Calabria; expert rabbit butchery and cookery from Bruna in Tuscany; and handmade tortelloni filled with pumpkin and crushed amaretti from Giovanna in Lombardia. Each woman “taught something about the power of food to connect us; to ourselves, our history, our land, our culture, to our past and to the present moment.”

GIVE THIS TO: Armchair travelers in search of cooking mentors. —Vanessa Pruett