groundbreaking A Mediterranean Feast, which won the 2000 James Beard award for Cookbook of the Year and the James Beard award for the Best Writing on Food, An Italian Feast celebrates the cuisines of the Italian provinces from Como to Palermo. An illustrated culinary guide and vade mecum (book of ready reference) meant to be the most comprehensive book on Italian cuisine, it includes over 800 recipes from the 109 provinces of Italy's 20 regions.

An Italian Feast is a book about Italian food, how Italians cook, eat, and how their food is an intimate part of their culture, perhaps even a defining element of "Italianness." It is the first book-in any language-to comprehensively explore the gastronomy and cuisine not just of Italy, and not just the regions of Italy, but all 109 provinces of Italy, linking each with each other and their alimentary landscape in terms of history, agriculture, economics, and the material culture of creative food illustrated with 1,000 recipes

An Italian Feast examines how and what Italians cook and eat, why they cook and eat what they do, and how food informs their consciousness, both individual and collective, and therefore their culture. This is not a collection of "typical Italian recipes" but rather a book of exemplary dishes from each province of Italy that hopes to preserve the heirloom recipes that reveal the molecular nature of Italian cooking, with the village as atom and the family as neutron. This book is a culinary archeology meant to honor the old ways and culinary heritage of Italy and provide both historical and philosophical insight into the Italian culinary consciousness. When you prepare the recipes in An Italian Feast, you will be cooking and eating the unaltered and exact food of Italians past and present.