cover image Veneto: Recipes from an Italian Country Kitchen

Veneto: Recipes from an Italian Country Kitchen

Valeria Necchio. Guardian Faber, $29.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-7833-5108-4

In this inviting cookbook, Life Love Food blogger Necchio offers family recipes from her home region of the Veneto as well as other recipes she has gathered since moving away from the area. The book’s first part, titled “Then,” includes recipes from the Veneto such as one for rice and peas, a dish which falls halfway between a risotto and a soup, and one for chicken braised in tomato sauce the way Necchio’s late grandmother made it. Eventually Necchio left the Veneto for Piedmont before settling in London, and in the second part of the book, “Now,” she includes recipes from those places, such as one for fried pumpkin smothered in onions and violet artichokes braised in vermouth. Necchio writes in lovely elegiac prose about her small hometown (a place she couldn’t wait to flee but now, of course, misses), and the recipes themselves are clear and appealing, no matter from which time in the author’s life they originate. Several have the feel of filler, however (does even a novice need a recipe for hard-boiled eggs topped with anchovy fillets?). A small section of recipes for preserves such as grappa-soaked cherries rounds out this pleasant, albeit not groundbreaking, compendium. (Dec.)