Rosemary and Red Wine Book Box

With innovative ingredients and traditional favorites to bring Italy home, Cositutti boxes are a perfect way to sample our cupboards and a great way to gift your friends. Always from small producers and generational families committed to preserving and protecting regional food from Italy and her Mediterranean neighbors.

If preparing well-laid tables of good food and conviviality is the purpose and pleasure of this book then the Italian lifestyle is the spirit that brings it to life. Each recipe is written with a backstory of taste and traditions and the memory of my culinary experiences. Look beyond the fork of every Italian dish and you will find a fascinating gastro-history. The recipes in this book are from a variety of sources. Many have been passed down by my Lombardian cousins and relatives in the Veneto in the oral tradition of the great kitchens of Italy. Several are from favorite ristoranti, trattorie, cooking schools, family members and friends. Some are written in the narrative style so that I might include the experiences I have had eating and traveling in Northern Italy, Tuscany and Umbria on road trips. Traveling by car with our Italian family and friends down Roman roads, past castles with Celtic altars and Etruscan ruins, through medieval walled cities and Alpine lakes, visiting Renaissance chapels into kitchens, orchards and vineyards developing a taste for Italy and wanting more. All with the belief that preparing a well-laid table to share with your family and friends in a relaxed and tranquil manner is a lost pleasure that must be found again.