Cooking with Nonna: Celebrate Food & Family With Over 100 Classic Recipes from Italian Grandmothers Hardcover – Illustrated, March 15, 2017

This is an impressive, hardbound book with paper jacket, hate to get it splashed and splattered while I use it! Made the Lentils with Pasta, I've made lentil soup before, but this was more of a side dish to eat with a fork, it was a nice alternative. Made the Sausage & Peppers tonight for ease, the picture drew me in. I additionally added sliced garlic and red pepper flakes (I couldn't help myself). I'd make a note though that the when directions say to brown the sausage and remove from pan to add back later, make sure you cook it through before removing, bc directions say only 'to brown' it. This is important bc the added 5 mins cooking at end will not be long enough to cook the sausage enough. Just sayin'. We ate this on top of crunchy, hot Italian bread with a sprinkle of melted mozz on top, placed under the broiler. Made the marinated peasant-style zucchini, great side dish or antipasto. It's a simple make-ahead recipe you can do overnight, good for holiday table or company entertaining. Eaten at room temp. It looks just like the picture of the recipe.I like that the authors of this book have put all weights on their list of ingredients. I like to weigh my flour and other similar ingredients. It's given in cups, ounces, milliliters, and grams. I use my digital scale constantly, as it's the only way to cook using many ingredients bc weight is consistent, measurements aren't. Thanks to the authors for paying attention to that! Lovely pics abound, however I only wish more pics were in here of items that are hard to visualize rather than common ones such as eggplant parm and spaghetti and meatballs and such. A bread recipe caught my eye that is made and twisted and further turned into a 'pinwheel' it says... and another recipe Eggplant Purses, both unusual recipes that I wish had an illustration to see. Also, there's a Jam-Filled Olive Oil Cookie recipe that has no illustration either, and it would be helpful to see how it is appears after assembly of making and using a fresh cookie dough rolled out and stuffed with jam. I have plenty of jam around I can use as I am a canner, so I'll have to try it, sight unseen, and hope for the best. There are some homemade pastas, with and without eggs (good to have in case you have egg allergies), and a Sicilian pizza. The Seafood Beatrice looks lovely, (bc there's a photo to see!) also the Sicilian Milk Pudding, looks creamy but in a form you can cut like a cake, and breads, and more. I have about a good dozen or more pages tagged for immediate consumption!I'd also like to add as a sidenote, as others have alluded to, that the stories within the pages here of all of the Nonne are heartwarming, especially that of Nonna Romana, Rosella's nonna, whose life story is unbelievable and should be shared. It is a story worthy of the big screen, what an inspiring life story indeed. I can see why these recipes have so much soul.Update: 4/7/17: Made the Sicilian Milk Pudding, easy and tasty, like rice pudding w/o the rice, but took only 10 mins from start to finish. I didn't have ladyfingers to assemble it into a 'pie' so I poured into ramekins as recipe suggested. I also made the Artichoke Pie, I love all things artichokes. The topping was unusual, not just the usual scattering of seasoned, oiled bread crumbs before baking. You could use other veggies with this too, brussels sprouts for example. The house now has a fragrance of parmesan cheese. I halved these recipes to test it out, they are both keepers.Update 4/30/17: Made the stuffed mussels, excellent and looks just like the illustration. The 'batter' was just that, a batter, using eggs. (I used only one). Used to using just plain bread crumbs w/seasonings, this was a novel twist for me. Will make them for apps on Mothers' Day!

I have been a fan of Rosellas YouTube channel for a while and I finally decided to take the plunge and buy her book. I am definitely not disappointed! It is far larger and heavier than I imagined it would be, the quality of the book itself is outstanding. The pages are very thick and the photographs are beautiful. The quality of the binding is fantastic too, this is not the kind of book that will fall apart after a few uses or even a few years.The recipes are just wonderful. Lots of basic recipes but that doesn’t mean boring. The narratives in the book from the various women whose recipes are featured in this book are heartwarming and really makes you realize how different our world is today. It also speaks to the fact that all of these recipes are tried and true and have been used to feed generations of people and this book is preserving something that would likely die out without an effort like this. I can’t imagine that you could dislike anything in this book, the recipes for classics such as stuffed peppers and stuffed eggplant are delicious and easy. I have made stuffed peppers more times than I can remember in my life ,but the stuffed pepper recipe in this book taught me a new trick! I never thought to place the peppers in the pot of tomato sauce and cook them like that instead of baking them in the oven. It was a great idea and I really enjoyed my peppers made this way and I will definitely be doing it again! So the recipe may have been simple ,but there was a little twist I had never seen before. A lot of the recipes seem to be this way for me. I really enjoy seeing other peoples versions of things I’ve been making for years. There are no ingredients needed in these recipes that are not available readily, occasionally a recipe may call for something that might require a trip to an Italian specialty store, but nothing is difficult and you can easily make substitutions anywhere and the author guides you with this as well.To the reviewers who say this book is nothing special, it makes me wonder if you grew up with an Italian grandma yourself? The simplicity of these recipes speaks to the life these ladies lived raising families and needing to feed lots of people on a budget. You don’t need to learn any fancy techniques to make delicious dishes. The stories in this book make it a step above the average cookbook for me. Reading about the different featured cooks was heartwarming and gave this book such a personal feel to it. If I was to write a cookbook with the recipes from my childhood it would be very similar to this. I love that Rosella has touched that cord in all of us who grew up in Italian American families. So many special occasions in my life included tables filled with the food featured in this book.Brava Rossella! Thank you so much for doing what you do to preserve our heritage like this, I am very excited about your next book and can’t wait to purchase that as well!

I’m a huge fan of the “Cooking with Nonna” show (my Sicilian in-laws were always sharing “Cooking with Nonna” recipes on Facebook so I had to check it out—and wow!). I married into a Sicilian family where nearly everyone owns an Italian restaurant or store and cooks the most incredible dishes. I’ve attempted a few of the family recipes on my own, but they lack a lot of details (details that are passed down in the kitchen) that someone who wasn’t born into La Famiglia needs.After the passing of our beloved family matriarch, Nonna, last Thanksgiving, it’s become imperative to me to learn Italian Cooking so I can teach my daughter. Enter the “Cooking with Nonna” cookbook to augment what I’m learning through Rossella’s web series. The cookbook is as touching as it is instructional: the life stories of each Nonna interspersed with the recipes.Without exaggeration, when reading the recipes and “Nonna says” hints, you feel like you have your own team of Italian grandmothers guiding you and cheering you on. I really appreciated the “Getting Started” and “What’s in Nonna’s Kitchen” sections in the beginning of the book because they detail what you need to get started.This will be a timeless cookbook that gets passed down to my daughter. The pictures are beautiful, detailed, and inspiring. “Cooking with Nonna” is a sentimental and fundamental Italian cookbook and I highly recommend it for both the novice and experienced Italian cooks!