Gennaro’s Cucina

Gennaro’s Cucina: Hearty Money-Saving Meals From an Italian Kitchen by Gennaro Contaldo focuses on cucina povera, the traditional cooking of rural Italy, where seasonality and a “waste not want not” lifestyle deliciously intersect. If you love to buy loaves of artisan bread but often find them stale before you can eat them up, grab this book. Numerous recipes incorporate past-its-prime bread—you’re probably familiar with panzanella, but here we’re introduced to ribollita, a Tuscan bean and bread soup; cooked bread with rocket and pancetta; and many more dishes that make me want to go out and buy a loaf just to let it sit until I’m ready to cook. But meat and fish are hardly overlooked here, nor is pasta (after all, what is it but a bit of water and flour?) and sweets such as mini ricotta doughnuts and Sardinian sweet ravioli.