CIAO ITALIA

Deep roots and warm memories inform this companion volume to the PBS series of the same name, by the Italian-American cooking teacher who grew up draping homemade pasta over a broom handle hung between two kitchen chairs...and then spent time in Italy learning and teaching other regional specialties. Her bent is toward homey and unpretentious but serious cooking that can be as simple and familiar as fried cauliflower or grilled eggplant—but that also features, in the eggplant line, a more than usually complex molded timballo. Homemade soups (including one with strands of pasta dough poured in through the holes in a colander), homemade pastas (she makes hers with eggs and a five-to-one mix of all-purpose and semolina flour), and homemade breads, gnocchi, and polenta all bear the mark of Esposito's bred-in-the-bone expertise, which she translates here to useful tips for those who really want to cook the way Italians do for their families.