Lucinda's Rustic Italian Kitchen Paperback

In this small but tasty collection of Italian recipes, Lucinda draws on her travels and ancestral past for classic home-cooked dishes to bring rustic Italian food to the busy American table. Her "Notes to the Cook section" covers some basic territory such as how to control the flavor of garlic, the merits of salted capers and her secret dredging weapon, Wondra flour for gravy. Though selections like Carolina's Wine Taralli (cookies) and Tuna Gremolata Dip have a sophisticated flair, there are plenty of earthy, elemental pleasures, like Polpette (a meatball in Italian, but Quinn turns it into a meatloaf), which is baked with mortadella slivers and pistachios, and Tuscan kale sautéed with olive oil and seasoned only with salt and pepper. Along with plenty of color beauty shots by Quentin Bacon, Lucinda's book demonstrates that even at its very humblest, Italian cooking yields extraordinary flavors.