About this item
Capture the flavors of Italy with more than 150 recipes for conserves, pickles, sauces, liqueurs, infusions, and other preserves The notion of preserving shouldn't be limited to American jams and jellies, and in this book, author Domenica Marchetti turns our gaze to the ever-alluring flavors and ingredients of Italy. There, abundant produce and other Mediterranean ingredients lend themselves particularly well to canning, bottling, and other preserving methods. Think of marinated artichokes in olive oil, classic giardiniera, or, of course, the late-summer tradition of putting up tomato sauce. But in this book we get so much more, from Marchetti's in-person travels across the regions of Italy as well as the recipes handed down through her family: sweet and sour peppers, Marsala-spiked apricot jam, lemon-infused olive oil, and her grandmother's amarene, sour cherries preserved in alcohol. Beyond canning and pickling, the book also includes recipes for making cheese, curing meats, infusing liqueurs, and even a few confections, plus recipes for finished dishes so you can savor each treasured jar all year long.
About the Author
Before I was a cookbook author and food writer, I was a newspaper reporter. I wrote about all kinds of things: school board meetings, the latest fitness craze, or how billionaire philanthropists like to give away their money. I hardly ever wrote about food, even though it was the subject I thought about most. Years after I had graduated from Columbia School of Journalism and worked at several newspapers, it finally dawned on me that I could and should be writing about food. So that is what I am doing.
I grew up in an Italian family. At the dinner table we spent more time debating what we should eat tomorrow night than politics or the news of the day. My mother is a native of Chieti, a picturesque hilltop city in Abruzzo, not far from the Adriatic coast. She had my sister and me shaping gnocchi and ravioli by the time we could see over the kitchen counter. We spent our summers in Italy with my mother's three sisters (all great cooks) ; each year my father planned trips around the peninsula guided by where the best local food and wine were to be found.
I've continued the tradition of food-focused trips now that I have my own family, and I'm happy to say that my latest book, The Glorious Pasta of Italy, has some great examples of little-known regional specialties as a result.
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