Adventures of an Italian Food Lover: With Recipes from 254 of My Very Best Friends

Faith Willinger has spent three decades exploring Italy, traveling from the Alps to Sicily to visit its artistic and architectural wonders and track down the best restaurants, regional cooks, winemakers, and food markets. Along the way, shes made many friends, eaten lots of tasty meals, and collected a wealth of authentic Italian recipes. Now, in Adventures of an Italian Food Lover, she pays tribute to her friends and to the food and wine shes enjoyed in their company. If you plan to visit Italy, you can use this book as a guide to finding some of Willingers favorite places, from tiny shops stocked with foods available nowhere else in the world, to outdoor markets overflowing with an incredible variety of fish, cheese, fruit, and vegetables, to great restaurants in big cities and small villages. If you cant travel to Italy as soon as youd like to, Willingers recipes from real Italian kitchens, her warm, engaging profiles of the cooks who perfected them, and her sisters charming watercolors of Italian friends and scenery beautifully evoke the essence of this enchanting country.

The recipes all start with great ingredientsextra virgin olive oil, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, heirloom wheat pasta, salt-packed capers, and other Italian pantry favoritesand use the freshest meat, fish, and seasonal produce. Willingers friend and neighbor in Florence shares her recipe for the delicious home-style Turnips and Their Greens with Garlic and Chili Pepper; the chef-owner of a bustling Neapolitan trattoria combines the freshest ingredients from the sea and the field in his Pasta with Mussels and Zucchini Flowers; and a Milanese marketing consultant who inherited his familys vineyard in Le Marche and started an enological revolution in the region provides the recipe for the rustic Polenta with Tomato Sauce and Sausage Ragù he often serves to guests in the elegant formal dining room of his art deco villa.

Part cookbook, part travelogue, Adventures of an Italian Food Lover is an insiders guide that will bring the best of Italy into your home and into your heart.

"It's one thing to enjoy a masterfully prepared Italian meal, but something else entirely to experience it in a small trattoria nestled in the canyons near Bologna, and author Willinger (Eating in Italy) knows the difference; conveying the sensory splendor of her 30 years living, shopping and eating in Italy, Willinger makes a warm personal guide to her favorite shops, markets and vineyards, and the often colorful characters who operate them (aided throughout by Suzanne Heller's clever watercolors). Willinger introduces grocers like Salvatore de Gennaro and Anna Maria Cuomo, who stock artisan cheeses and salumi homemade by Salvatore's dad; and winemakers like Silvia Imparato, owner of Montevetrano, 'one of the most exciting wineries in southern Italy.' Each entry is followed by a recipe: Tuscan bakers Francesco and Elisabeth Pandolfini offer Brutto-Buoni, a traditional cookie laden with almonds and pine nuts, while Dario Cecchini, Italy's most famous butcher (featured in Bill Buford's Heat), gives tips on choosing and preparing steaks. Other standouts include artisan grappa, Amedei chocolateir in Tuscany and custom perfumier Lorenzo Villoresi in Florence. Culinarians will delight in her stories and recipes, though the book functions better as a guidebook for travelers; included are web sites, hours of operation and contact information that make arranging a personal visit easy." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

This delightful blend of recipes and travelogue offers readers a matchless insider's tour of the best in Italian food and cooking. Faith Heller Willinger has spent three decades exploring Italy's culinary landscape, and in this collection, she and her friends share recipes for dishes that showcase the best local ingredients and cooking traditions.

Faith Heller Willinger is the author of Eating in Italy and Red, White & Greens, and is a frequent contributor to Epicurious, the Condé Nast food website. She lives in Florence with her Tuscan husband, Massimo. Visit her at www.faithwillinger.com.