Here we are, tesoro mio, at the hundredth recipe — the last page of this little book we have filled together, one kitchen memory at a time. It feels only right to end where my own family’s story truly begins:…

When I was a girl, my mother’s cousin Zia Ada lived up near Cividale, close enough to the Slovenian border that her kitchen smelled half of Friuli and half of somewhere else entirely — walnuts and grappa mixed with a…

When I was a girl visiting my mother’s cousins in the Val di Non, autumn meant one thing above all: crates of apples stacked to the rafters, and the whole kitchen smelling of cinnamon and warm butter. My zia Hermine,…

In Genoa, Christmas Eve did not truly begin until the pandolce came to the table, carried in by whichever child was youngest that year — for many years, that child was me, my arms trembling under a plate far too…

When I was a girl in Emilia-Romagna, zuppa inglese meant Sunday was truly Sunday. My mother kept a squat little bottle of Alchermes on the top shelf, its red so bright it looked bewitched, and she only brought it down…

In our house in the hills above Verona, Christmas Eve smelled of butter and vanilla long before anyone spoke the word presepe. My grandmother Fiore kept a battered tin star mold that had belonged to her own mother, its ridges…

When I was a girl outside Treviso, tiramisù wasn’t something you learned from a recipe card — you learned it standing at your mother’s elbow, watching how quickly she dipped the savoiardi so they never turned to mush. Some say…

Every December, when the fog rolled low over the rooftops of Milano and the shop windows filled with golden domes wrapped in cellophane, my grandmother would begin her panettone three days before Christmas Eve. She was not from Milano herself…

When I was a girl in the hills below Torino, my grandmother kept a little copper pot just for panna cotta, and no one else was allowed to touch it — not even to wash it. She said the metal…