Nana’s Creole Italian Table: Recipes and Stories from Sicilian New Orleans (The Southern Table)

"In Nana's Creole Italian Table, Elizabeth Williams uses her family history to tell the story of the tens of thousands of immigrants from Sicily who came to settle in New Orleans between approximately 1885 and 1915, while sharing the food traditions she's intimately familiar with, as the descendant of Sicilian immigrants. She explores the Sicilian life and community that developed in New Orleans and how that culture influenced the city. Far more than a family memoir, Nana's Creole Italian Table is also a food memoir. Williams looks at traditional Sicilian foods, from pasta to olive salad, exploring how they fit into the existing food culture of New Orleans. Ultimately, the meeting of Sicily and New Orleans produced such delicious and familiar results as meatball po-boys and Creole red gravy. The new immigrants also introduced unfamiliar vegetables and fruits into New Orleans, expanding the Sicilian influence on the city's food culture. Williams shares her own family recipes, while offering variations on many of those recipes to show the evolution, flexibility, and blending of Sicilian food and Creole Italian food. Her book will appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of New Orleans food and to fans and practitioners of its burgeoning foodie culture"--… (more)