Bitter Almonds: Recollections & Recipes from a Sicilian Girlhood - Hardcover

Grammatico, Maria; Simeti, Mary Taylor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688124496 ISBN 13: 9780688124496

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1994

Synopsis

Memoirs of a Sicilian woman's childhood--spent in a harsh convent where she learned to make incredible pastries--are combined with recipes, written down for the first time, for such delectable treats as biscotti, tarts, cakes, marzipan confections. 35,000 first printing. $25,000 ad/promo.

About this title

Reviews

Bitter almonds lend depth of flavor to the buttery cookie doughs prepared by nuns in the south of Italy. And the bittersweet recollections of Grammatico, a renowned pastry cook and shopkeeper in Erice, Sicily, lend depth to this slender volume of Italian recipes. As researched by Mary Taylor Simeti, author of several books on Sicily, the reminiscences of hardships endured during Grammatico's girlhood, spent as an orphan in a Sicilian cloister, give poignancy to the uncomplicated, sweet pastries that make up her life's work now. Americans accustomed to rich excesses and scads of chocolate in their desserts may not find much to excite them here. But those who savor fine pastry and Italian artistry in marzipan and baking will apreciate the enormous effort necessary to translate Grammatico's recipes for use in our kitchens. Recent voyagers to the south of Italy may find themselves feeling slightly homesick for the simpler meals-and simpler lifestyle-evoked by Grammatico.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Simeti is the author of the delightful Pomp and Sustenance: Twenty-Five Centuries of Sicilian Food (LJ 8/89) and On Persephone's Island (LJ 3/15/86), also about Sicily. In the course of her research, she discovered Grammatico's pastry shop in Erice, where Grammatico continues to make the traditional pastries she learned as a girl in an orphanage run by nuns. At one time convents all over Sicily were known for their special pastries; now making the special marzipan creations and other cookies Grammatico sells is almost a lost art. Simeti presents Grammatico's own account, spirited and often moving, of her bleak life in an austere convent orphanage-although it was during the late 1950s, it reads more like something out of Dickens-followed by the recipes for all the pastries she offers at her thriving bakery, now known far beyond the town of Erice. A unique and special book.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688124496
• ISBN 13: 9780688124496
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 8