Cooking alla Giudia

From deep-fried artichokes (carciofi alla giudia) to hearty fish stew (zuppa di pesce), the Venetian specialty of sarde in saor (sweet-and-sour sardines), and orecchiette pasta, some of Italy's best-known dishes are Jewish in origin. But little is knownabout the Jewish people in Italy and their food traditions. From Milan to Rome and Florence to Sicily, the culture of Jews is entrenched in Italy. It was the Jews, for example, who taught Italians to eat eggplants, and thus helped inspire the classic eggplant parmigiana. Cooking alla Giudia is the ultimate tribute to the wonderfully rich, but still largely unknown, culinary heritage of the Jews of Italy. With recipes from Persian, Lebanese, Ashkenazic, and Libyan Jews, and kosher, vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options, author Benedetta Jasmin Guetta is on a mission to tell the story of how the Jews changed Italian food, to preserve the extraordinary recipes of the Jewish communities of Italy and make them vital and relevant today. Highlighted throughout the book are holiday meals with regional Italian specialties along with guides to the Italian cities with Jewish heritage. The book will show how to integrate the recipes into your everyday meals and holiday traditions, including indexes indicating which dishes are best for which holidays and which recipes are kosher--