In Italy, trattoria means a family run, inexpensive restaurant, with unpretentious tableware. The menu usually offers local traditional dishes. What is the meaning of traditional dish? It means that that particular recipe is the result of many attempts, over the centuries, to achieve the best with locally available, nearly always simple, ingredients, but with due imagination have led to such sublimity, as tortellini in brodo, parmigiana di melanzane, or aranzadas. Such culinary creativity! If a modern chef invented pesto alla genovese today, he’d be forever famous. Why do trattorie in Sardegna serve malloreddos, in Emilia tagliatelle and in Puglia orecchiette? How many regional recipes are there? Some books report more than five thousand!! Here preference is given, region by region, to just some really local dishes. They will be presented with the relative recipe in photographs showing how they were served, i.e., the dishes have not been prepared specifically and photographed with professional technique. The book contains more than two hundred pictures and one hundred recipes, with their legends and historical background.
