Many of us are familiar with Italian restaurants in the US, and their fare, while often tasty, is frequently stodgy. Lots of pasta and dough. Lots of tomato sauce. It can be satisfying but if you have been to Italy and eaten there, it hardly compares. Genuine Italian food tends to be delicious and healthy. So VEGETARIANO: 400 Regional Italian Recipes is a very welcome cookbook. It is long at about 450 pages total, and it is illustrated with great photographs. Just looking through the book is an immense pleasure. Red onions with eggplant stuffing. Eggplant chips. Easter Pie with Greens and Herbs. Chickpea Flour Cake. Fava Puree with Wild Chicory. Rice soufflés. Potato Dough Ravioli with Wild Greens and Herbs.

It was originally written in Italian and published in Italy, and the translation converts to imperial units of pounds and ounces, cups and pints, rather than the metric units of Europe. The recipes are color coded, with the ingredients given in green, the description in brown, and the directions in black. It has many sections, and it has a great index that lists recipes by region. Some of the ingredients may be tricky to get unless you have a specialist Italian store within access, but most of the recipes have ingredients that are easy to get. Some of the recipes are easy to make, while others are a bit daunting but still tempting. A good proportion of the recipes are vegan, or could be made vegan, although the book is not particularly aimed at vegans.

While I haven’t made many of these recipes, the ones that I did do were amazing.

© 2018 Christian Perring

Christian Perring teaches in NYC.