Beginning at the age of 7, working in a bakery in his village on the isle of Capri, Chef Andrea Apuzzo has amassed a lifetime of cooking wisdom. Though his first two successful cookbooks?La Cucina di Andrea’s and Andrea’s Light’centered on recipes developed as a restaurant chef, this book takes us into Andrea’s home kitchen. It’s the kind of food that, if you are lucky, your Mama and especially your Grandma used to make. Gone are the highly stylized and unforgiving ?mother sauces? of classical European restaurant cuisine, replaced deliciously here by direct approaches to direct flavors, including glorious soups, stews and braised meats that are the true hallmark of authentic Italian cooking. Getting special emphasis, naturally, are the freshest of seafoods that daily inspire this popular chef, born on an island in the Mediterranean and embraced by seafood-crazed New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico.In this task of home cooking, Apuzzo was joined for every chop, sprinkle and stir by veteran author and food editor John DeMers, a New Orleans native whose 31 published books have taught him much about how the foods of his hometown fit into the broadest visions of global cuisine. Some of his most successful cookbooks include The Food of New Orleans, The Food of Jamaica, Caribbean Cooking, Dominique’s Fresh Flavors and Big Easy Cocktails. More to the point, DeMers spent three seasons researching, translating and polishing Italian recipes for the PBS cooking series Cucina, an effort that produced a companion cookbook each year.
