His personal story takes up probably the smallest space in the book, but he peppers his recipes and foodie-essays with tales from his youth or home town or family, so the book is pretty saturated with the author's life and experiences. pages just about salt or eggplant or risotto where they come from, history, his tips and preferred methods for using them) They are fun and informative. I think my favorite parts to read are the essays about different ingredients or famous Italian dishes.

It is heavy and wordy with not nearly enough pictures, but also personal, charming, and passionate. Locatelli's tome is part cookbook, part essay, part autobiography. This is the contemporary Italian food bible, from the acknowledged master of modern Italian cooking. He peppers the book with evocative stories and funny and often outspoken observations on the state of food today. He combines food narrative with hands-on expertise of a top chef. Made in Italy is a 624-page, vibrantly illustrated book full of Locatelli's recipes, insight and historical detail about Italian food. After getting suspended from cooking school because of kissing a girl on the school's steps, he went on to become a greatly admired chef. His grandmother, who shared her great love of food with him, said Giorgio would have to go back and show him.

He was told by the head chef at his first real Italian restaurant job that he would never make it as a chef. Almost everything his family ate and drank was produced locally. He was raised in Corgeno in northern Italy, close to the Swiss border and Milan. Giorgio Locatelli started helping out in the family restaurant at age five.

Made in Italy by Giorgio Locatelli