Cooking Alla Giudia - by Benedetta Jasmine Guetta (Hardcover)

About the Book

Jews have lived in Italy for thousands of years, yet their contributions to Italian cuisine have been largely untold. Cooking alla Giudia shares the recipes, but also the connections of the Jewish people to many beloved Italian dishes and other wonderful delicacies.

Book Synopsis

The ultimate tribute to the wonderfully rich, yet still largely unknown, culinary heritage of the Jews of Italy.

From Roman deep-fried artichokes (carciofi alla giudia) to Venetian sarde in saor (sweet-and-sour sardines), Apulian orecchiette pasta, and Sicilian caponata, some of Italy's best-known dishes are Jewish in origin. But little is known about the Jewish people in Italy and their culinary traditions. It was the Jews, for example, who taught Italians to eat the eggplant, and thus helped inspire the classic eggplant parmigiana and many other local specialties. With a collection of kosher recipes from all regions of Italy, including plenty of vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options, author Benedetta Jasmine Guetta is on a mission to tell the story of how the Jews changed Italian food, to preserve these recipes, and to share with home cooks the extraordinary dishes prepared in the Jewish communities of Italy. Highlighted throughout the book are menus with regional Italian specialties, along with short, useful guides to the Italian cities with Jewish history. Cooking alla Giudia will show how to integrate the recipes into your everyday meals and holiday traditions as well.

Review Quotes

"Guetta's new cookbook proves why Jewish Italian food deserves to be better known. Cooking alla Giudia is a tribute to the rich culinary heritage that gave us Roman deep-fried artichokes, caponata, and more.
--Martha Stewart Living

"Guetta realized how few Italians knew how much Jews had influenced their beloved cuisine. To help them learn, she wrote [Cooking alla Giudia]. . . . While Roman-Jewish recipes have been well documented both in Italian and English, Guetta said that many lesser-known Jewish-Italian recipes were in danger of being lost."
--The Forward

"Benedetta Jasmine Guetta shows us the ways Jewish and Italian cooking overlap historically, culturally, and--most important--deliciously. From antipasti to zuppa, she covers the canon of flavors, traditions, and dishes that make Italian Jewish food uniquely appealing."
--Adeena Sussman, author of Sababa

"Cooking alla Giudia is an authoritative work on Italian Jewish cuisine that weaves together the complex history and narratives of Italy's Jewish communities with the vibrant recipes that have had outsized influence in Italian food culture."
--Katie Parla, New York Times bestselling cookbook author