(orion $38.99)
once again the stuck-at-home-with-yet-another-Vegemite-sandwich reader is transported to the charming seaside town of Triento in the south of Italy where everything tastes delicious, smells divine and oozes fruity olive oil and soft cheese.
It is almost impossible to turn a single page of Nicky Pellegrino’s book and not dash to the kitchen to fry something. But where is she when that extra pound of flesh in your armpit gets stuck in the zip of your favourite dress, eh? Probably at home digging in her vege garden just like Babetta, the green-fingered old Italian woman in Recipe for Life.
Although hopefully, Nicky’s husband is a bit more animated than Babetta’s Nunzio, who announces that “Buongiorno is dead” and refuses to speak or leave his chair. Into Babetta’s increasingly spare life comes lively Alice, a small brown-haired English girl who is trying to run away from the deep, dark scars inflicted by a stranger’s attack back in England.
At first, these two – one at the beginning of her life and one nearing the end – appear to have little in common, but as they work together tending the sun-kissed garden in the grounds of the Villa Rosa, they find shared ground in the joy of Italian food and cooking.
Babetta plucks fat pods of fava beans, sweet baby peas and young shoots of spring onion which she puts in a basket and gives to Alice who whips up a mouth-watering homemade ravioli with soft white goat’s cheese and sage leaves fried in butter. I mean, please! How’s a person supposed to go back to half a rotten avocado and some stale crackers after reading that?
In her tantalising fourth novel, Nicky teases us with lashings of Italian sunshine, a handful of sexy chefs and tables that heave with barbecued squid, spaghetti and clams, stuffed sardines and baskets of freshly baked crusty bread. But perhaps the most important ingredient is happiness: a dish that Alice finds can be enjoyed wherever you are, although it’s the whoever that counts.
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