Le ricette, i segreti, il mangiare di casa di mia nonna, che per passione divenne cuoca / The recipes, the secrets, the food in the house of my grandmother, who for love became a cook

Francesca Colombini ha ritrovato nell’archivio di famiglia le carte della nonna paterna Elina. Queste carte comprendono lettere, promemoria, libri e fotografie, ma soprattutto ha lasciato le sue ricette di cucina. Eliana giovane sposa aveva imparato a cucinare per l’amato marito ed era poi divenuta un’ottima cuoca. L’autrice ricompone quei ricettari, frutto di aggiunte e ripensamenti, creando una navigazione curiosa tra i sapori e i segreti del cibo.

Francesca Colombini is a “Tuscan from Montalcino” (in Siena these subtitles  make a difference) and belongs to a family in which everyone has always left evidence of everything. The author would sometimes go digging through the papers of her paternal grandmother, Elina Colombini Padelletti, in the family archives. Here Signora Francesca has sought out the letters, the memoranda, the notes left in books or on yellowed photographs of a world gone by, often times marvelous and heartrending. Especially so in the recipes, scrupulously divided between “those for town” and “those for the country,” as though to under score the substantial difference between the two contexts. Because, among otherthings, Elina was a great cook. As a young bride, she had learned to cook out of love for Pio, her refined husband, who was her Pygmalion and her judge. So Francesca Colombini has recomposed these recipe books which are the fruit of continual additions and revisions, almost a diary in recipes, a curious discovery tour through the secrets, moods and flavors of food. Here the author offers us the “Booklet for cooking in town.”