AVAILABLE: MARCH 29, 2022
Cooking alla Giudia: A Celebration Of The Jewish Food Of Italy is a modern collection of the wonderfully rich culinary heritage of the Jews of Italy.
Jewish contributions to Italian cooking is not as well known as it should be, and between this release and Leah Koenig’s next book about Roman Jewish food, Italian Jewish cooking is having a definitive moment.
We wrote about this extraordinary history last year, as we here have long been obsessed with the Italian Jews, Roman Jews, and Italkim. If you don’t have The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews: Traditional Recipes and Menus and a Memoir of a Vanished Way of Life by Edda Servi Machlin and her follow-up The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews II: More Menus, Recollections and Recipes, get them both now. Edda was, and remains still even after her death in 2019 at 93, the definitive guide to Jewish Italian cooking.
But it is an extraordinary moment for Italian Jewish cooking and Cooking alla Giudia is terrific.
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.
With a collection of kosher recipes from all regions of Italy, including plenty of vegan and vegetarian options, author Benedetta Jasmine Guetta is on a mission to share for a new generation how the Jews changed Italian food, preserving those recipes and sharing them with the world.
Highlighted throughout Cooking alla Giudia are menus with regional Italian specialties, along with short, useful guides to the Italian cities with Jewish history. The hope is that the cookbook will show how to integrate the recipes into your everyday meals and holiday traditions as well.
Author Benedetta Jasmine Guetta is an Italian food writer and photographer. Born in Milan, she currently lives in Santa Monica, California. In 2009, she cofounded the lovely website Labna, the only Jewish kosher cooking blog in Italy, specializing in Italian and Jewish cuisine. Guetta has been spreading the word about the marvels of Italian Jewish food in Italy and abroad, teaching in cooking schools, synagogues, and community centers. Her work has been featured in numerous news outlets in Italy and abroad, including the Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, Elle à Table, Saveur, and Tablet. Guetta has previously co-authored two cookbooks in Italian, Cooking alla Giudia: A Celebration Of The Jewish Food Of Italy is her first English-language cookbook.
Benedetta Jasmine Guetta, Cooking alla Giudia: A Celebration of The Jewish Food of Italy. Artisan, a division of Workman Publishing Company, USA. Hardcover. $40.00; 352 pages. Preorder now, shipping scheduled to start March 29, 2022.
