30 DAYS OPEN PURCHASELiguria is about the Italian region that gave the world pesto and focaccia, and which almost no one knows for anything else.
The region is a narrow strip between the Alps and the Mediterranean, running from the French border past Genoa and down towards Tuscany. The mountains reach all the way to the sea, farmland is scarce, and the cuisine has been shaped by that scarcity. Herbs and vegetables rather than meat, olive oil from the small Taggiasca olives, and preboggion, a mixture of wild herbs gathered on the hillsides that has no real equivalent anywhere else.
Pesto comes from here and is made with Genovese basil in a mortar, never a blender. So does focaccia, while the version from Recco is made entirely without yeast, with cheese between two thin sheets of dough. Farinata is baked from chickpea flour in a wood-fired oven. And despite the coastline, fish is used sparingly, with anchovies as the exception.
The book is the first in a series produced by Apartamento together with Belmond and combines recipes with travel writing. The photographs are by Laura Jane Coulson, and the essays are written by contributors including Andy Baraghani and food historian Luca Cesari.
The design is unmistakably Apartamento's own, closer to a magazine than a cookbook, and it is as rewarding to read as it is to cook from.
Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 176
Language: English
First published: July 2024
