I first saw Patrizia Chen's slim and handsome volume on a shelf in my local library. I was there looking for inspiration and entertainment, and this little book rewarded me abundantly in both ways. It is subtitled, "Growing Up In A Tuscan Kitchen" and the minute I saw those words I knew this book was coming home with me.

The cover is fittingly graced with a picture of Chen as a very young girl in the garden of her family's home in Livorno. I say fittingly because Rosemary and Bitter Oranges is all about the kitchen of Chen's early girlhood. She lived with her parents in the home of her maternal grandparents, who were formal, stern and sometimes forbidding authority figures. Although the home was gracious and lovely, and the garden a haven for all the family members, most especially the youngest ones, her grandparents had some rather strict notions about eating. Meals were formal, and sometimes her grandfather's sensitive stomach called for bland and unappetizing food.

Why, you may be wondering, would someone who grew up in such a way write a book about growing up in the kitchen? Because, neither Chen's mother, who was a sheltered upper class wife, or her grandmother, who ruled the home, was the cook there. Instead, Patrizia's beloved Emilia, a small and strong country woman, was the family's cook. It was Emilia who taught Chen to cook, and to love food. It was also Emilia who befriended the young girl in a house full of rather imposing adults, and gave her a refuge in the warm and colorful kitchen, full of delightful smells, and an ever abundant source of delicious foods and important lessons.

I did mention earlier that this is a handsome book, but I want to stress it again. The volume is full of small but beautifully reproduced black and white photos of the author's family and, of course, Emilia. The gracious life style of the family is easy to see, and yet there is much more to their existence. This is not a "aren't you green with envy at my Tuscan life" book. The family here has its strengths and weaknesses, and the story, or what there is of one, is a family story; the author finds her solace in the kitchen, where she not only learns to cook, but begins to understand the nature of the world around her. Emilia's kitchen provided Chen with a counterpoint to rest of her world. This is a sensitive portrait of a real family. One comes away feeling they know the author, and that she is quite human.

But in a sense, I've digressed from the focus of the book: the food. This is easy to do, however, because Chen skillfully weaves an intimate portrait of her family with a series of tempting recipes and entertaining kitchen tales. The foods in this book are easy to reproduce, and I include a sample recipe here, preceded by a quote from the book:

"The huge black cast-iron pots Emilia maneuvered with such dexterity - on the rare occasions she was allowed to prepare fried dishes - had to be meticulously oiled after each use. For this task, she used a special saffron-orange paper, the kind with which butchers and fishmongers wrapped food. She carefully unfolded the fillet of fish or the pound of ground meat as soon as she returned from the market, smoothing wrinkles, pressing borders, and straightening the big square pieces of paper, accumulating them day after day in tidy heaps on one of the shelves of the pantry armoire. The moment she finished using a pot, Emilia took a piece and wiped away the grease with a circular movement of her hand.

Not a drop of dish soap was allowed to interfere in the cleansing of those pots. 'Il sapone distugge il ferro,' Emilia scornfully claimed; it was a well-accepted domestic axiom that any trace of soap would quickly ruin the iron. Emilia continued to swab the sides and the bottom of the pot until it was clean, retaining a faint shine, still resplendent with the oil's luster. Only then did she carefully pile it atop the other pots inside the big armoire.

'Pulisci mentre cucini!' Emilia counseled. Cleaning up as you cooked was an imperative: a real cook had to learn to keep the kitchen spotlessly clean and tidy, especially during the preparation of an elaborate meal.


Triglie al Tegame alla Livornese, or Panfried Mullet

1 medium onion
1 clove garlic
1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
6 whole mullet (each about 7 ounces), scaled and gutted
Salt and freshly ground pepper a piacere
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup Emilia's Tomato Sauce (the author gives the recipe, but yours will do fine)
12 bay leaf

Peel and mince the onion and garlic. Finely chop the parsley, and combine with the onion and garlic.

Warm the olive oil in a heavy frying pan, preferably cast-iron, over medium heat. Pat the mullet dry with a paper towel. Season with salt and pepper, dust lightly with the flour. When the oil is hot, put the mullet in the pan and cook for 3 minutes. Turn them delicately, and cover with the parsley mixture. Pour in the tomato sauce, add the bay leaf, and cook for about 3 minutes more, until the fish flakes easily when poked with a fork. Discard the bay leaf before serving.

When you are finished, remember to clean the pan!

Makes 6 servings."

The book is full of wonderful glimpses such as this into the kitchen and the rest of the life of Chen's family when she was a girl. We go with her to Emilia's home, to school, to church, visiting, and on an especially interesting journey to visit her father's family in Sicily. Pictures and recipes round out the intimate portrait of the life of an upper class family in Livorno several decades ago.

I highly recommend Rosemary and Bitter Oranges to anyone interested in Tuscany, in food, and in a great read.

Rosemary and Bitter Oranges
Growing Up In A Tuscan Kitchen
by Patrizia Chen
Scribner, New York, 2003

While not quite the "read" that Rosemary and Bitter Oranges is, I did find Mary Ann Esposito's Ciao Italia in Tuscany to be a thoroughly enjoyable and quite useful cookbook. I should make it clear from the beginning of this review, that I only turned to Esposito's book while searching for a reader requested recipe, and I was more than surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did. Esposito's television series, Ciao Italia on American Public Television has never been one of my favorites, and, consequently, I had not seen any of her cookbooks.

It was then a pleasant surprise for me to find that I enjoyed this book as much as I did. The recipes are very good, and I have used them often since picking up the book. Esposito's writing style is literate and approachable, and the chipper way she has of speaking on television, I believe, must have led me to believe that she is less astute than I found her to be on the printed page. Without the picture and voice of television, Esposito comes across in this book as a sophisticated and able cooking educator, with an enthusiasm for Tuscany that is contagious.

The book is divided into several chapters that take the reader along, in a few introductory pages each, on Esposito's visits to various food and wine producers, hosts and restaurateurs throughout Tuscany. I especially loathe cook or travel book authors who make a point of letting their readers know just how much of an insider they are, or conversely and still condescendingly, how they find the quaint Italians charming. But Esposito's genuine appreciation for the people she meets in her food travels through Tuscany (she was filming her series on location at the time) is apparent; she is neither snobbish nor condescending, but instead make us feel that we too, had we the opportunity, could connect with this vintner or those contadini in the same way that Esposito has.

Following the brief pages that lead us into Tuscany's kitchens, wine cellars, fields and trattorias, Esposito gives several recipes in each chapter that are easy and tempting to follow. In her chapter on Palazzo Davanzati in Florence, she tells us in colorful language what it might have been like for those that did the cooking in a Renaissance palazzo.

"A day in the life of the women of the palazzo went something like this: They brought in wood for the day from the storage area as well as the daily water supply, which came from a well, they baked bread, prepared meals, spun cloth, cut and sewed garments, tended to the sick, helped with the birth of children - and when all was said and done, they enjoyed a little conversation by the fire before repeating the same activities the next day. Paolo Certaldo, a writer of the time observed: 'If you have womenfolk in the house, be sure they always have some task to do and are never idle, and if you have a young maid, put her to sew and not to read, as reading is no occupation for a woman unless she is to become a nun. Teach her all household duties; to make bread, to clean a capon, to make butter, to cook and to do laundry, to make a bed, to spin and weave.'

Whenever a place like Palazzo Davanzati transports me to another time, I have to catch myself and remember what life did not afford, and be grateful that I can romanticize at will what life could have been like in the past."

How refreshing I found these thoughts; too often glimpses of palazzi are only recounted as catalogues of art treasures or history lessons. How nice it was to hear a very human voice recount such insights while reveling in the splendors of what once was. Esposito follows these paragraphs with a recipe for stuffed figs, which I quote below.


Fichi Ripieni Davanzati, or Stuffed Figs Davanzati Style

Serve 4

1 small Golden Delicious apple, peeled and grated
1 small pear, diced
2 tablespoons minced almonds or pine nuts
1 tablespoon fresh bread crumbs
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ginger
Pinch of salt
8 large, fresh green figs, washed and cut in half lengthwise
2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter

Butter a 9-inch casserole or Pyrex-type dish and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a small bowl mix together the apple, pear, nuts, bread crumbs, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and salt.

Place the figs cut side up in a single layer in the baking dish.

Divide and spoon the filling on top of each fig half. Pour the melted butter evenly over the top and bake the figs for about 20 minutes, or until just heated through. Serve immediately."

I enjoyed this unusual recipe, taken from the archives of the Palazzo Davanzati's library, as much as I enjoyed Esposito's description of her visit and the thoughts it inspired. Among the towns she takes her readers to are Viareggio, Lucca, Pisa, Livorno, Prato, Settignano, Impruneta, Sansepolcro, Arezzo, Cortona, Siena, Lucignano, and Montalcino. Each place she visits provides several glimpses into the way Tuscans think about and prepare their food. The book is has a large section of full color photos and several black and white ones of the author and those who assisted her on her culinary journey through Tuscany. Again, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the foods, the people, the festivals, and the folklore of Tuscany.

Ciao Italia in Tuscany
by Mary Ann Esposito
St. Martin's Press, New York, 2003