Discover the real techniques, ingredients, and stories behind the Italian dishes you know and love—and ones you’ve yet to try—with 175 simple, delicious recipes from the James Beard Award‑winning team at Milk Street.
Forget everything you thought you knew about Italian cooking. In Italy, cooks throw away their garlic cloves, don’t stir their polenta, make massive meatballs that are tender and light, and never hover over their pans of risotto. True Italian cooking is simple, surprising, and so much more interesting than what we commonly believe.
Backroads Italy gives readers a seat at the table with cooks across Italy who share the real recipes for the foods we love, as well as the stories of the people, places, and ingredients behind them. After years scouring Italy from Lombardia to Calabria and from Sardinia to Sicily in search of fresh takes on classic recipes, the Milk Street team challenges our assumptions about Italian food, covering both traditional favorites and new‑to‑you finds. You’ll learn about the real fettucine Alfredo—which never includes cream—to the perfect torta Barozzi, which has drawn crowds to a Modena pastry shop for nearly 140 years, to unexpected ingredients like fermented chili paste.
Along with these exclusive recipes, this comprehensive guide to true Italian cooking includes approachable basics, such as sauces, from‑scratch pastas, and a list of everything you need on hand for a well‑stocked pantry.
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I love cookbooks. That isn’t a secret to anyone who knows me. However, this is so much more than your average cookbook. Yes, it has recipes. Tons of recipes. But, it also has beautiful photography and stories. I think the stories were my favorite part and I could take an afternoon just reading through them. I’m honestly torn between putting this with my other cookbooks or leaving it out as a coffee table book for everyone to enjoy.
For now, I think I’ll continue working my way through it. I can’t wait until I can really dig in and start cooking from it, though with this beauty, I think I’ll be jotting down recipes and taking them with me to the kitchen. I don’t want to mess up any of this gorgeousness!