Liliana Tommasini

A Year of Italian Holidays with 130 Classic Holidays Recipes from Italian Grandmothers cookbook by Rosella Rago lists delicious Italian recipes from regions all over Italy. What makes the Cooking with Nonna: A Year of Italian Holidays: 130 Classic Holiday Recipes from Italian Grandmothers endearing to me is not only the traditional Italian recipes but the holiday memories the Nonne (grandmothers) share which invoked feelings of nostalgia remembering the good times I had celebrating with my Nonne. For more Italian recipes, visit the Cooking with Nonna website or watch Rossella’s popular web cooking show, Cooking with Nonna. The Cooking with Nonna: A Year of Italian Holidays cookbook was provided for review by the publisher for review.

I used plain yogurt for Plumcake con Yogurt al Limone (Lemon Yogurt Sweet Bread) and it still had a nice lemony flavour. It’s also the first cake I learned how to make from scratch. It seems that every Italian baker has a Torta di Mele recipe in their baking repertoire and in addition to my mother’s apple cake recipe, this one has been added to mine. Having been raised in an Italian household, I am familiar with quite a few recipes in the this cookbook, but since Italian desserts differ from region to region, I discovered many more recipes that I am looking forward to bake.

The Sweet Maria’s Italian Desserts cookbook by Maria Bruscino Sanchez shares recipes for Italian and Italian-American casual and classic cookies, cakes and tarts. I have made cookie recipes from this Italian desserts cookbook so far such as Orange Drop Cookies and Amaretti,   but the Fig and Walnut Biscotti recipe is one of my favourites. After the  Introduction to ingredients, equipment and basic baking techniques, there are chapters that include recipes for  Cookies, Cakes, Pies and Tarts, Pastry, Sweet Breads, Frozen Desserts, Fruit Desserts, Other Favourites and Dessert Sauces. These chapters include well-written and easy to follow that include  traditional recipes made with fresh and available ingredients such as: Orange Drop Cookies (Anginetti d’Arancia), Amaretti, Traditional Cannoli, Sicilian Cassata, Tiramisu, Rum Sponge Cakes, Specialty Sweet Breads such as Panetttone and Pan di Pasqua,  Polenta Cake, Italian cheesecakes, Fruit Tarts, and the festive Christmas Tart (Crostata di Natale) with a sweet cranberry and walnut filling, English Trifle with Strawberries and Marsala, and Neapolitan Cake. Fig and Walnut Biscotti, one of the Italian fig cookie recipe found in the Cookies chapter, is a mixture  of figs and walnuts scented with cinnamon making your kitchen smell heavenly while baking them.

The Canning Kitchen: 101 Simple Small Batch Recipes by Amy Bronee of The Family Bites blog, is the first canning book I reviewed. I found the Fig Jam with Secrets recipe in the Preservation Society Home Preserves: 100 Modern Recipes cookbook by Camilla Wynne, and it has been my favourite jam since. My Cookbook Addiction Reading through Preserving Italy: Canning, Curing, Infusing and Bottling Italian Flavours and Traditions by Domenica Marchetti brought back fond memories of my Italian family canning tomatoes and making caponata together. The Preservatory is written by Lee Murphy, proprietor of Vista D’Oro Farms & Winery and The Preservatory in BC’s Fraser Valley.