Teresa Lust Knihy

"Moving from the Italian Piedmont to the Maremma and then to Le Marche, chef Teresa Lust interweaves portraits of the people who served as her culinary guides with cultural and natural history in this charming exploration of authentic Italian cuisine. We learn how to prepare bagna cauda--a robust dipping sauce of anchovies, garlic, and olive oil--with Lust's relatives outside Torino. We learn about making hand-stretched grissini, Italy's iconic breadstick, the secrets of whipping up zabaione, a classic dessert of ethereal foam made with egg yolks, sugar, and marsala. Then there is acquacotta, a rustic soup that nourished generations of the area's shepherds and cowhands. In the town of Camerano, an eighty-year-old woman reveals the art of hand-rolling pasta with a three-foot rolling pin. Underpinning Lust's travels is our journey from chef to cook, mirroring the fact that Italians have been masters of home cooking for generations, so they are an obvious source of inspiration. Today, more and more people are rediscovering the pleasures of cooking at home, and Lust's account--and wonderful recipes--will help readers bring an Italian sensibility to their home tables."--Amazon

A delicious journey through Italy and a celebration of the relationship between family and food.

Drawn from actual events and characters in the author’s family history, The Librarians of Alexandria is a multi-generational saga spanning the years from the Unification of Italy in 1870 to the end of the Second World War. The librarians are the two Sisters Canterno: the beautiful, impassioned Marta and the withdrawn yet loving Margherita. Their intertwining stories are told by Marta’s daughter, Adriana, who alternately narrates as a young girl and as a grown woman, reminiscing with the aged and infirm Margherita. Set in Alexandria, Rome, and Palermo, the novel is at once circular and epic, a love song to culture – to languages and books, art and music – told in sensuous prose that evokes the sounds of rustling parchment manuscripts, parlor games, songs, and the strife of antiaircraft fire, while conjuring the scents of old libraries, dusty alleys, silkworm farms, and mandarin oranges.