Cooking and Dreaming Italian-Style

I own too many cookbooks, way too many cookbooks. I admit it. I plead guilty. Uncle, uncle! I knew I was in deep trouble a number of years ago when I decided to put just my favorite everyday cookbooks together in a bookcase convenient to the kitchen. There were about 80. And I read them every single day, especially now, when I'm trying to limit my exposure to scary news, and dream about cooking, dream about food.

The past few days I've been browsing in my Italian cookbooks (How many total in that category? No idea. Let's just say a lot and leave it at that.) I can't remember when, exactly, my parents, my mother really, gave me Lydia Cooks from the Heart of Italy: A Feast of 175 Regional Recipes, published in 2009.

Just like the title says, the recipes are arranged by region, although not every region is represented. Calabria (where my father's parents were from) is there, although Campania (where my mom's parents were from and where Naples is located) is not. Not to worry though, my good friend Sandy Rappaport filled that gap some time ago with food maven Arthur Schwartz's tome Naples at Table ("Neapolitan cooking is 'what the whole world knows as Italian cooking'. . .two of the most popular foods in the world -- spaghetti with tomato sauce and pizza -- are Neapolitan. It speaks of the poverty that drove thousands of people from Naples and its countryside to seek opportunity elsewhere. . .") I also own several other cookbooks by the fabulous Mr. Schwartz (New York City Food, Soup Suppers, and What To Cook), but I digress. . .

Here is the full-color glossy that precedes the section of Calabrese recipes in Lydia's book, although Angelo and Maria came from Calabria's interior, not the seacoast. And if you really want to take a deep dive into Calabrian cuisine, there's always My Calabria, also from my collection:

Anyway, as I was paging through the Heart of Italy, a recipe from the Valle D'Aosta (a tiny region in northwest Italy bordered by France and Switzerland, those are some pretty swell neighbors) caught my eye: Roasted Pepper & Olive Salad with Fontina. It features roasted yellow bell peppers, large green olives, and Fontina cheese, preferably from the Valle itself, all slivered, over which is poured a dressing made with -- wait for it -- some heavy cream along with mustard and cider vinegar.  Lydia says you can replace the cream with olive oil (not terrible) but concedes that the cream gives the dressing "a velvety texture." 

Fontina. As one website lyrically rhapsodizes, At the feet of the Alps, in the Italian Aosta valley, lie the lush meadows upon which red-pied Valdostana cows provide the milk needed to produce Fontina. Incredibly rich and creamy, the flavors of this cheese are sweet and pungent, unveiling tones of butter and roasted nuts as it lingers on your palate.  I mean, my God!

So just for today I dream about Fontina cheese, about that salad, on a warm spring evening much like tonight, with a crisp Pinot Grigio, some Italian bread, and the company of foodie friends, carefree, shall we once again be carefree, shall Italy once again be La Bell'Italia, safe and beautiful, my ancestral land?