In The Southern Italian Table, award-winning cookbook author, radio talk-show host, restaurant critic, and cooking teacher, Arthur Schwartz, chronicles his love-affair with Southern Italy, which began in childhood eating and smelling his Brooklyn neighbors’ ziti with ragu, and drinking their homemade wine. It was the food of these immigrant families that drew him to Southern Italy, where he discovered more fully the region’s gastronomic (and other) pleasures, and the ingredients that make them so alluring. It's the famous Mediterranean diet based on vegetables and greens , beans and other legumes, fish, fruit, pasta and bread, eggs and cheese, all seasoned with herbs healthful such as oregano, basil, parsley, and rosemary, plus capers, olives, fennel seeds, and, it's most important fat, olive oil.

In this definitive resource, Schwartz showcases the gastronomical history of the six regions of Italy’s rustic south--Campania, Molise, Puglia, Calabria, Basilicata, and Sicily--with 200 classic recipes, gorgeous photography by award-winning food photographer, Alan Richardson, and headnotes and sidebars that put the recipes and ingredients in historical, cultural, and personal context.

For lovers of Italian food, armchair travelers, and Arthur Schwartz fans alike, The Southern Italian Table will become a dog-eared favorite and a friendly guide to la vita italiana.