Fresh ingredients, raised in your own garden prepared in the Italian way make a superb meal. For twenty-five years I have been gathering Italian recipes to delight and instruct my friends. Light and flavourful are the words for these recipes. Italian cuisine appeals to me for its frugality with ingredients but expansiveness of taste. Old bread is converted to wonderful garlic toast by simply drying it in the oven and then rubbing it with a garlic clove and lightly coating it with olive oil. Served with your homemade pesto or herbed tomatoes and cheese, it is a mini meal it itself. Italian meals I have prepared with friends and students are in a menu section to give you ideas of how to combine recipes into a delicious meal.

In step-by-step detail I walk you through the recipes. All the ingredients are in sequential order of use with instructions of how to use them at each step. In nearly 40 years of teaching people to cook, my students have taught me how to write a recipe. All recipes have been test cooked and refined by my students for years. I start with the basics, stocks, numerous pestos, spreads, and herbed oils. Once the basics are covered the recipes go on to beverages, breads, soups, antipasti, salads, pasta, rice, polenta, gnocchi, and hot cooked vegetables. Chicken, meat and rabbit recipes are separate from beans, fish and eggs recipes if you prefer not to eat meat. The final selection is sweets (dolci) with a light touch on the fat and sugar.

Recipes included are:

Italian beverages.

Italian basics.

Italian basics herbed olive oils.

Italian bread.

Italian beverages.

Italian stocks.

Italian soups.

Italian antipasti.

Italian pesto and spreads.

Italian salads.

Italian hot vegetables.

Italian rice.

Italian polenta and gnocchi.

Italian pasta.

Italian beans.

Italian eggs.

Italian fish dishes.

Italian meat dishes.

Italian chicken and rabbit.

Italian sweets (dolci).