Risotto With Nettles: A Memoir With Food Anna Del Conte

Paperback. Published by Vintage, 2010. 326 pages. Good tidy condition.

Sharply observant, evocative, and full of tastes and talk of food, one of the greatest living experts on Italian food offers a delicious, poignant memoir of an unusual life

Anna Del Conte's life story is informed and enlivened by the food and memories of her native Italy—from lemon granita in childhood winters to wartime risotto with nettles, from vitello tonnato to horsemeat roll, from pastas to porcini—each chapter rounded off with mouthwatering recipes. Born in Milan, she grew up in pre-war Italy in a privileged gentler time. When war came to Italy her family had to abandon their apartment and the city for the countryside, where in war-torn Italy the peasants still ate well, but life was dangerous. As a teenager, Anna became used to throwing herself into a ditch as attack planes flew over, and was imprisoned, twice. She arrived in England in 1949 when much of Britain was a culinary wasteland, married an Englishman, and stayed on to eventually launch a culinary revolution. Her memories of a life seen through food are vividly, hilarious preserved—from the joys of unrationed horse meat to bringing up her children while writing the cookbooks that would inspire a new generation of cooks.