La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy cookbook

“La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy” by Accademia Italiana Della Cucina

Foodies can refer to this collection of recipes as a culinary map of Italy. Over 50 years in the making this unique book was compiled by the Milan based Accadamia Italiana della Cucina, an organisation passionate about preserving the nation’s recipes. The dedication of these members sees them visiting villages and towns across Italy to collect never-before-documented recipes from grandmothers and farmers. All 20 regions of the country are featured- resulting in over 2000 recipes, eight chapters and two handy indexes.

“La Cucina” is truly an old-fashioned cookbook, where you can hear the grandmothers all over the Italian countryside telling you how to really make a dish the traditional way. It isn’t a modern day cookbook where the chef takes you by the hand and tells you everything step by step.

However, some recipes will require a bit of common sense because there are couple of mistakes, probably lost in translation.

Whether you cook the recipes from this book, or just want to read it for fun, you will gain a better understanding of the country through its cuisine. Most of the recipes are simple, and vary from region to region - which in my opinion is fantastic to see where a particular dish originated.

We love it!!!

j-b x