The glory of Italian cooking is the richness and seemingly endless variety of its regional fare, home cooking raised to something near heavenly perfection, with never a hint of standardized formulae of international cuisine. In no other country of Western Europe does the best restaurant cooking so nearly resemble the ideal home cooking that is every food lover’s dream.

Sunshine, the  fruits of earth and sea, natural richness, and the passionate and direct personality of the Italian people give Italian food its distinguishing flavour, from the antipasti inherited from ancient Rome, seafood, fine shellfish sauces, eggs, olives, spiced sausage, through the various pastas, which many who have never explored Italy or Italian cooking mistakenly believe is Italian food, to the many meats cold and hot, raw Parma ham thin cut veal, stuffed and Genoese, noble spiced salami and the resounding roll-call of vegetables, asparagus, truffles and aubergines, artichokes, chicory, and sweet potatoes. Then there are the sharp local sauces with which the inhabitants of valley, plain and upland bring life to their dishes, pouring over them all the warmth of a Mediterranean climate, in the flavours of tomato, basil, and anchovy, peppers both hot and sweet, horseradish and olives.

Here is a generous bouquet gathered from this regional wealth. There are some three hundred recipes and each finished dish is stunningly illustrated in colour to show the aspiring cook how she can please the eye as well as the palate. The recipes are grouped in ten sections: antipasti, pastas, rice (long an important and versatile item on Italian tables and often much under rated elsewhere), soups, meat, fish, sauces, vegetables, deserts and cakes. Each section is prefaced by a short introduction, placing the various kinds of recipe in their historical and regional contexts and giving general advice on ingredients and alternatives.

Lovers of Italian food, whether as a result of holidays, gastronomic exploration or perhaps memorable meals in some of the thousands of fine Italian restaurants which are among Italy’s most notable and successful exports, will find in this book the means of recreating for themselves and their guests something of the best in Italian cooking.