"Forget everything you thought you knew about Italian food. In Italy, cooks throw away their garlic, they don't stir their polenta, and they never labour over pans of risotto. But they do make enormous meatballs that are tender and light, and they occasionally break all the rules when making pasta. The editors at Milk Street have spent years scouring small eateries, local markets, farms and home kitchens from Lombardy to Calabria and from Sardinia to Sicily in search of fresh takes on classic recipes as well as little-known regional favorites that never crossed the Atlantic. On our travels we found new ways with pasta, from foolproof cacio e pepe in Rome to Puglia's olive oil-crisped fettuccine with chickpeas and a lemony pesto from Amalfi, where the pasta itself is enriched with citrus."--