The Roads to Rome
A Cookbook
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
IACP AWARD FINALIST • An epic, exquisitely photographed road trip through the Italian countryside, exploring the ancient traditions, master artisans, and over 80 storied recipes that built the iconic cuisine of Rome
When former food writer Jarrett Wrisley and chef Paolo Vitaletti decided to open an Italian restaurant, they didn’t just take a trip to Rome. They spent years crisscrossing the surrounding countryside, eating, drinking, and traveling down whatever road they felt like taking. Only after they opened Appia, an authentic Roman trattoria in Bangkok of all places, did they realize that their epic journey had all the makings of a book. So they went back. And this time, they took a photographer.
Roman cuisine doesn’t come from Rome, exactly, but from the roads to Rome—the trade routes that brought foods from all over Italy to the capital. In The Roads to Rome, Jarrett and Paolo weave their way between Roman kitchens and through the countryside of Lazio, Umbria, and Emilia-Romagna, meeting farmers and artisans and learning about the origins of the ingredients that gave rise to such iconic dishes as pasta Cacio e Pepe and Spaghetti all’Amatriciana. They go straight to source of the beloved dishes of the countryside, highlighting recipes for everything from Vignarola bursting with sautéed artichokes, fava beans, and spring peas with guanciale to Porchetta made with crisp-roasted pork belly and loin.
Five years in the making, part-cookbook and part-travelogue, The Roads to Rome is an ode to the butchers, fishermen, and other artisans who feed the city, and how their history and culture come to the plate.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this lushly photographed cookbook, Wrisley and Vitaletti, who own Italian restaurants in Bangkok, take readers on a delightful culinary tour of Italy. For five years the pair deepened their knowledge of Italian cuisine by feasting north to south along the Appian Way and its arteries, stories of which they share in chapter introductions. They open with a trip to Norcia, near Perugia, which inspires a simple platter of cold cuts (along with sliced porchetta, roasted red peppers, and grilled marinated eggplant), and they end back at their farm outside of Rome with a demanding, sublime preparation of pappardelle in a ragu of pigeon and quail. In between, the duo spends days with a quirky inventor-farmer who lives near Pisa and inspired their creamy, egg-rich carbonara; discover that colatura, an Italian condiment similar to Asian fish sauce, is produced much the same as it was in the 1700s, in the coastal Campania region; and dine on seafood meatballs (minced calamari and white fish) and orecchiette with broccoli rabe from Bari "the end of the Appian Way." The result is a tantalizing collection of authentic, rustic Italian recipes.
