Everyone who loves to cook has an Italian grandmother. Even if you're no where near Italian by heritage or through any other vague relation, somewhere in your psyche lives an impossibly small woman brandishing a thick wooden spoon and making deliciously simple, honest food. Jessica Theroux, a chef, artist and author of Cooking with Italian Grandmothers understands the idea of every cook's inner Nonna. In her book, Theroux travels around Italy, staying with and learning from various Italian mammas in this incredibly enlightening collection of stories and recipes. After living for several months in Italy myself, I must say that Theroux's depiction and understanding of Italian life is not only accurate but totally immersing. I found it so welcoming - flipping through the pages of vibrant photographs and reading Theroux's experiences in the kitchen and out of it.
The dishes that Theroux has compiled are lustily, almost inappropriately delicious-looking. I think I was most pleased to find so many rabbit dishes - especially the ones that Theroux learned from Mary, the mamma from Arezzo. During my time abroad in Siena, a small medieval city in the heart of Tuscany, I visited the ruins of San Galgano just outside of the city. A once impressive Gothic abbey, all that remains now is a crumbly, disintegrating mess, and naturally, I fell in love. A short walk from the ruins is an agriturismo (a hotel/working farm/hiking, biking and trekking retreat) where, as the sun set on a buzzing, late summer night, I was tricked into my first bite of rabbit.
I was not planning on eating a cute, fuzzy, big-eared bunny. To be honest, I wasn't looking forward to eating any of the food they put in front of me. I was young and foolish, obviously. Risotto di spinaci? Rice? No, thank you! But my first bite and madonna. It was so creamy! That was our first course, and already doors were opening up in my tiny little mind. Delicious, delicious doors. The risotto was followed by a plate of golden potatoes and tiny bits of what was, to me and my friends, mystery meat. "Pig! Pig!" The Italian man at the table next to us said, pointing with his fork and smiling when a friend asked if he knew what it was. The old woman in the kitchen stuck her head out around the door and smiled in playful menace, and that should have been my first tip-off that what I was about to put in my mouth was not, in fact, pork. What it was, was deliriously good. I cleaned the plate before the man giggled and made bunny ears on either side of his head. "Coniglio!" he laughed.
Theroux didn't seem to have the same qualms over eating Bugs Bunny as I did, and, honestly I think that's for the best. The dishes she's acquired are unflinchingly authentic, yet still accessible to the modern American cook. And with dishes like Lasagne di Vincisgrassi, a dish named after an Austrian prince from the 1700's, we get a glimpse of how old, how time-honored the Italian tradition of food is. That same dish that I was duped into trying and loving echoes in the receipes that Theroux learned from Mary from Arezzo (though maybe her version, with rosemary potatoes and fennel roasted rabbit might be a bit more sophisticated than the simple rabbit and potatoes from the agriturismo). The fact that Theroux was able to collaborate with so many quietly talented grandmothers is such an inherently Italian and good thing - a partnership between those who know and those who want to learn. We as readers can consider ourselves lucky to have a glimpse of Theroux's rich and culinarily rewarding experience.
