Pasta Grannies Comfort Cooking: Traditional Family Recipes from Italy's Best Home Cooks

Vicki Bennison’s popular YouTube channel began as an effort to record all the pasta shapes made throughout Italy. While that project may never be complete until she has visited every nonna on the peninsula, the effort has led to countless heartwarming encounters.

In this book, Bennison documents Italian home cooks and home cooking with an emphasis on the channel’s most popular recipes, some of which are not pasta, but pizzas, vegetable sides, and desserts. (There is even an occasional grandfather as well.) 

While Italian grandmothers may not be famous for precise measurements, Bennison writes deliberately detailed recipes, hoping to inspire cooks to tackle some of the more ambitious or unfamiliar dishes. For instance, a nettle tagliolini with porcini sauce from Liguria; stringozzi from Lazio, which are long, continuous pasta loops; gnocchi from Trieste which are fried in apricot butter.

We’re pleased to see that every recipe is clearly associated with the region from which it comes. And QR codes with each recipe link you directly to the YouTube episode featuring the relevant grannie.

Hardcover. Color photographs.