Gastronomy of Italy

The best Italian food writer – Anna Del Conte. If you adore with Italian food and love to get hands on cooking Italian food; this is a book you must have, is packed with knowledge, technique, history, regional food of Italy.

I had little embarrassing moment in a very quiet book store, when I saw this book on the selves, unconsciously said My goodness, I found you!

I like the way Anna write about the history about the regional food, as she had tasted them and described it as she felt about the dish; Of course I believed she did cook it at home as well for the dishes that she had tried. I do love the way of Italian cooking, they do know how to make something special while keeping it simple to make. I do enjoyed reading every dishes’ history and the background, and some were love story too, such as Panettone. How could you leave these useful information away, if you have guests for dinner the you could really sharing a little story like that on the table as well.

If you do discover the root of Italian food, basically it was influence from two civilization that flourished there: The Greek and the Etruscan. When you looking at the map of the European, you will see the southern of Italy was very close to Greece, as Greek brought the cuisine of sea, with their unerring knowledge of all the sea creatures; while the Etruscan turned toward the land produce. These characteristics still, to some degree, divide the cooking of the south, which was Magna Graecia, and of Sicily, from that of the more northerly regions whither the Etruscans went from their original settlements between Siena and Rome.  

Anna Del Conte is widely recognised as the doyenne of Italian cooking, In 1987 she was awarded the prestigious Duchessa Maria Luigia di Parma prize for Gastronomy of Italy. Her books include Italian Kitchen, Cooking with Coco and The Classic Food of Northern Italy, which in 1996 won both the Guild of Food Writers Book Award and the Orio Vergani prize of the Accademia Italiana Cucina.

In 1994 Anna received the Premio Nazionale di Cultura Gastronomica Verdicchio d’Orro prize for her contribution to the dissemination of knowledge concerning authentic Italian cooking. In 2010 she was awarded the honour of Ufficiale dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana; it was proposed to the President by the Italian Ambassador, Giancarlo Aragona, and the honour was given in recognition of the importance of her work in keeping alive Italy’s good image in the UK. She was also awarded The Guild of Food Writers Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.

The first edition of this book was published in 1987, as a gastronomic dictionary, set out entirely from A to Z, it included recipes to allow readers to experience the Gastronomy of Italy for themselves. A second edition appeared in 2001, in which the emphasis was on the recipes, many of them photographed in colour. This new edition, which has been fully revised, combines the best elements of both books.

I do hope you going to enjoy this book as well as you cooking with it.