Is Claudia Roden's The Food of Italy worth reading?

Claudia Roden, born in Cairo in 1936, is best known for her books on Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cooking, starting with A Book of Middle Eastern Food in 1968, according to Wikipedia's page on her. The Food of Italy was first published in 1989, and its publisher's page describes it as the result of a year spent in Italy researching the subject.

What makes it different

Many Italian cookbooks in English are organised by course: antipasti, pasta, mains, desserts. Roden's is organised by region. That one decision changes how you read it. Instead of "Italian food", you meet the cooking of the Veneto, of Liguria, of Sicily, of Emilia-Romagna, each with its own ingredients, habits and favourite dishes.

The effect is a little like travelling with a very well-informed friend who stops in every kitchen. You start to see how different one end of the country is from the other, how the same idea changes from valley to valley, and how much of what we call Italian food is really local food that travelled.

What is inside

The publisher's description promises over 300 recipes: pasta, rice, seafood, desserts and grand regional dishes, alongside the history and stories behind them. The current edition is an updated one: the publisher says more than 30 per cent of the recipes were revised for modern tastes, with additions such as farro salad and burrata.

As with any cookbook, the recipes are a starting point. Read the introduction to each region, then cook from it with your own judgement and your own ingredients.

Who it suits

• Curious cooks who already make a few Italian dishes and want to understand where they come from.
• Travellers planning a trip to one region, who want to know what to look for at the market and on the menu. It pairs beautifully with a visit to a local sagra.
• Readers of food writing who enjoy a cookbook with a point of view, in the tradition of Elizabeth David.

It suits less well if you want short ingredient lists and thirty-minute dinners. Some regional dishes are projects, and that is part of the charm.

How to use it at home

Cook a region at a time. Pick one region for a month, cook three or four dishes from it, and buy what is in season to go with them. A Ligurian month of pesto, vegetable tarts and focaccia; a Sicilian one of caponata, citrus salads and almond sweets.

Start with the vegetable dishes. Regional Italian cooking is full of them: stuffed peppers, braised greens, bean soups, vegetable fritters. They are often the most approachable recipes in any regional chapter, and the best way to taste a place through its produce. Our guide to what's in season helps you match them to the time of year.

Read before you shop. The context notes tell you which ingredients matter and which can be swapped. That saves money and disappointment.

How it compares

To our taste, Marcella Hazan is the one for technique and a confident home style, Elizabeth David for wit and strong views, and Roden for breadth and context, mapping the whole country region by region. Many keen cooks end up with all three on the shelf, used for different things. See our page on Marcella Hazan for her books.