Italian Cookbooks – The Best Of

[OliverB]

Sweet Myrtle and Bitter Honey about the food of Sardinia is great, as is My Calabria about the food, well, made at the southern end of Italy. Both very regional with lots of fun stories.

I'm surprised the Silver Spoon has not been mentioned here, supposedly one of the Italian classics since 1950? I don't own it, but was tempted just because it's supposedly such a classic.

I'd probably also suggest something completely wrong here, Jamie Oliver's Italy, which I've looked at several times. Not written by an Italian, but based on a trip around Italy and all the recipes I've ever made from the books of his that I do own always turned out great. Probably not 100% authentic, but easy to repeat and great tasting, that's what I'd expect from this book. And his writing is usually pretty fun to read.

Splendid Table is excellent as well.

But I doubt you could have one book that covers all of Italy well, it seems like the cooking doesn't only differ from region to region, but from town and village to town and village, if not from street to street. Which is why it's so much fun to travel there :-)

(on that note, if you can ever do so, go on a week or two week organized bike ride in Italy, you'll see so much more and get to taste all the great local food (and drink) of a compact area, I highly recommend that. Try to find an organization in Italy (we booked through Germany) as the ones that offer these things here in the US charge outlandish prices).