Pictures of marlena de blasi tours

Cookbook author and memoirist Marlena de Blasi does not seek the limelight, preferring instead to write her books in the shadows. The shadows, that is, of the great stone monuments of Italy, first San Marco in Venice and now a sixteenth-century palazzo in Orvieto in Umbria.

De Blasi’s body of work includes A Taste of Southern Italy: Delicious Recipes and a Dash of Culture (2006, originally published as Regional Foods of Southern Italy, 1999), Regional Foods of Northern Italy: Recipes and Remembrances (1997), A Thousand Days in Venice (Ballantine Reader’s Circle) (paperback, 2003), A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure (2005), The Lady in the Palazzo: An Umbrian Love Story (paperback, 2008), and That Summer in Sicily: A Love Story (paperback, 2009).

Her book on the food of northern Italy is, in my opinion, the best of the lot.

Although the memoirs contain recipes (usually from her previous cookbooks), her strength lies with her descriptions of food