Pasta Grannies: The Official Cookbook: The Secrets of Italy's Best Home Cooks

by Vicki Bennison

Overview

*WINNER OF THE JAMES BEARD AWARD FOR SINGLE SUBJECT!*

SAVING TRADITIONS AND SHARING SKILLS, ONE GRANNY AT A TIME!

"When you have good ingredients, you don't have to worry about cooking. They do the work for you." – Lucia, 85

Learn how to make pasta like Italian nonnas do. Inspired by the hugely popular YouTube channel of the same name, Pasta Grannies is a wonderful collection of time-perfected Italian pasta recipes from the people who have spent a lifetime cooking for love, not a living: Italian grandmothers.

For a nonna, love is putting food on the table, and pasta is the perfect vehicle to make precious ingredients go further. Featuring easy and accessible recipes from all over Italy, you will be transported into the very heart of the Italian home to learn how to make great-tasting Italian food. From pici – a type of hand-rolled spaghetti that is simple to make – to lumachelle della duchessa – tiny, ridged, cinnamon-scented tubes that take patience and dexterity, every nonna has her own special recipe. Pasta Grannies brings together the huge diversity of these authentic dishes and also celebrates the expertise, life and extraordinary stories of the amazing women behind them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784882884
Publisher:	Hardie Grant
Publication date:	10/29/2019
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	141,878
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 9.80(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Vicky Bennison spent many years working in international development in places like Siberia, South Africa, and Turkmenistan. The next decent meal was always on her mind and so she began writing about her culinary adventure, from mushroom hunting with the Russian mafia to cooking zebra stew near Lake Turkana in Kenya! She is the author of The Taste of a Place, and co-wrote Seasonal Spanish Food with José Pizarro.

Editorial Reviews

The recipes in…Pasta Grannies, are humble and strictly regional, the spirit rich and joyful.

The New York Times Book Review - Christine Muhlke

10/21/2019

In this ambitious cookbook, Bennison (The Taste of a Place) compiles dozens of recipes featured on her YouTube channel, Pasta Grannies, in the hopes of “saving traditions and sharing skills” of Italian grandmothers who have been making homemade pasta for most of their lives. Hailing from different Italian regions, the featured grandmas share a variety of pasta shapes in an array of sauces: Letizia from Sicily prepares tagliatelle with fava bean puree; Cesaria from Sardinia makes lorighittas (“double-hooped, twisted strands of spaghetti-shaped pasta”) with tomato-chicken sauce; Cornelia from Liguria makes pansotti; and Rosetta from Liguria makes trofie (corkscrew-shaped pasta) with basic sauce. The book is filled with fascinating anecdotes (“Rosa, it turned out, married the local priest”), and Bennison includes tips for many of the recipes (for shaping the pasta dough for raschiatelli with red peppers, she writes, “Maria rolls them with both hands at the same time for speed”). Other recipes include 93-year-old Giuseppina’s pici with garlic in a tomato sauce that should simmer for two hours, and Ada’s taglioli and bean soup. The recipes are easy to follow and include callouts to the YouTube channel for a visual guide. Bennison’s inviting cookbook of homey recipes celebrates pasta-making traditions. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly