A Blissful Feast

A delicious journey through Italy and a celebration of the relationship between family and food. 

Moving from the Italian Piedmont to the Maremma and then to Le Marche, chef Teresa Lust interweaves portraits of the people who served as her culinary guides with cultural and natural history in this charming exploration of authentic Italian cuisine.

We learn how to prepare bagna cauda—a robust dipping sauce of anchovies, garlic, and olive oil—with Lust’s relatives outside Torino. We learn about making hand-stretched grissini, Italy’s iconic breadstick, the secrets of whipping up zabaione, a classic dessert of ethereal foam made with egg yolks, sugar, and marsala. Then there is acquacotta, a rustic soup that nourished generations of the area’s shepherds and cowhands. In the town of Camerano, an eighty-year-old woman reveals the art of hand-rolling pasta with a three-foot rolling pin.

Underpinning Lust’s travels is our journey from chef to cook, mirroring the fact that Italians have been masters of home cooking for generations, so they are an obvious source of inspiration. Today, more and more people are rediscovering the pleasures of cooking at home, and Lust’s account—and wonderful recipes—will help readers bring an Italian sensibility to their home tables.

Teresa Lust is the author of Pass the Polenta: and Other Writings from the Kitchen. She is a graduate of Washington State University and holds a master's degree from Dartmouth College. Lust currently teaches Italian for the Rassias Center for World Languages at Dartmouth and teaches cooking classes. She lives in New Hampshire.