Verdura Vegetables Italian Style
Culinary Travel Italian Cooking Vegetable Cookery Regional Cuisine Farm-to-Table Plant-Based Cooking Cookbook Classics
Verdura: Vegetables Italian Style is the 1994 classic that turned farmers-market produce into the star of the table long before “plant-forward” was a hashtag. In 386 pages Viana La Place distills the sun-drenched vegetable cookery of every region of Italy—Sicilian sweet-and-sour eggplant, springtime Ligurian artichoke tarts, Umbrian lentils with tomatoes and wild fennel—into clear, fool-proof recipes that fit modern weeknight schedules. Each chapter is organized by vegetable, so whether you come home with a single bunch of broccoli rabe or a crate of mixed heirloom squash, you can flip to that section and find multiple authentic dishes, pantry notes, and wine pairings on the spot.
What makes this vintage Pan Macmillan paperback special is the depth of cultural storytelling woven through the instruction. La Place spent years cooking in rural Italian kitchens, and her headnotes read like postcards: nonna tricks for bitter greens, market-day rituals in Campania, the right olive oil to cradle a plate of raw fennel and orange. The book’s generous full-page illustrations—ink sketches of cardoons, porcini, Romanesco—serve as both beauty and botanical reference, turning the cookbook into a coffee-table piece you’ll actually cook from.
Collectors love the 1994 first-edition format; it’s compact enough to prop open on a counter yet encyclopedic enough to replace a shelf of niche Italian titles. This copy shows only light shelf wear—minor cover scuffing and one corner crease—while the interior remains crisp and unmarked, ready for sauce splatters of its next owner. If you want to eat more vegetables, explore regional Italian food beyond pasta, or simply own a piece of culinary nostalgia that still outperforms most new releases, Verdura is the single volume to grab.
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