Celebrating Italy: Tastes & Traditions of Italy as Revealed Through Its Feasts, Festivals & Sumptuous Foods, The

Italians are passionate about their food and love to celebrate together. At annual village festivals the food is cooked in mammoth proportions, the cobblestone streets become jammed with costumed processions and happy crowds sit and enjoy a communal meal that is a ritual of connection and neighborly love. In “Celebrating Italy, ” Carol Field takes the reader to these exuberant civic feasts and highlights their very special and ancient recipes. The result is one of the most remarkable cookbooks ever written, for in exploring festivals, Field has opened a bright new window on Italian culture and its sumptuous food.

Recipes include the victory dinner of Risotto Fratacchione — red onions and sausages eaten after Siena’s famous Palio; the Sorbir d’Agnoli — stuffed pasta in wine-spiked broth that the Mantuans eat on Christmas Day, and Pane di Cena’s sweet milk bread rolls, which is made to last all through Easter Week in Sicily.