Claudia Roden travelled up and down Italy for a year, through every region, taking in city and countryside, to discover the local specialities on their home ground. She visited the kitchens of both professional and private cooks, watching them at work and listening to their stories. From simple and rustic to grand bravura, the recipes she collected and tested represent traditional regional dishes as they are cooked today in Italy, and as they can now be cooked in our own kitchens, with ease and delight.

The food of the Italian regions - simple, unaffected but fresh and full of flavour - is the kind of food we all want to eat today. Made up of over 300 recipes, Claudia Roden's timeless and enchanting book is set against a backdrop of the story of Italy and its people - 'a splendid history, geography and cooking lesson rolled into one'.