224 pages / 8.00 x 9.00 inches / 13 color images, 12 halftones
Cooking / American South | Cooking / Italian | History / United States - Southern History
From meatball po’boys to Creole red gravy, the influence of Sicilian foodways permeates New Orleans, one of America’s greatest food cities. Nana’s Creole Italian Table tells the story of those immigrants and their communities through the lens of food, exploring the ways traditional Sicilian dishes such as pasta and olive salad became a part of—and were in turn changed by—the existing food culture in New Orleans.
Sicilian immigrants—Elizabeth M. Williams’s family among them—came to New Orleans in droves in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fleeing the instability of their own country and hoping to make a new home in America. This cookbook shares Williams’s traditional family recipes, with variations that reveal the evolution and blending of Sicilian and Creole cuisines. Baked into every recipe is the history of Sicilian American culture as it has changed over the centuries, allowing each new generation to incorporate its own foodways and ever-evolving tastes.
Elizabeth M. Williams grew up eating in two great food traditions, those of New Orleans and Sicily. Founder of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans, now part of the larger National Food and Beverage Foundation, she has a weekly podcast, Tip of the Tongue, about food, drink, and culture. She is the author of many books and articles about foodways in New Orleans and the South.
“New Orleans’s Italian community made enormous but often overlooked contributions to the city’s cuisine. Liz Williams is your perfect guide on the journey to discover what Creole Italian means in New Orleans.”
—Brent Rosen, president & CEO, Southern Food & Beverage Museum
“A cookbook, a history book, a Sicilian family of immigrants saga. In a kaleidoscope of flavors and fragrances, Liz Williams reveals Nana Elisabetta's secrets in marrying authentic recipes from southern Italy with locally discovered ingredients, spices, and culinary traditions.
Getting to know the different generations of Liz’s family, you’ll learn how hundreds of thousands of Sicilian immigrants socially integrated through the main point they had in common with New Orleanians: respect for the food.”
—Alessia Paolicchi, executive director, Italy-America Chamber of Commerce of Texas
“Liz Williams serves up delicious tastes of treasured recipes and family lore, from Sicilian traditions into New Orleans classics!”
—Sandra Scalise Juneau, author of Celebrating with St. Joseph Altars: The History, Recipes, and Symbols of a New Orleans Tradition
“Williams weaves the personal and the epochal throughout the arc of this delightful and essential recipe collection. Each dish, paired with a family anecdote, is a pretext to explore New Orleans’s history as an expression of the American experience. This wonderful book is sure to take its place among the classics in the southeastern U.S. gastronomic canon.”
—Jeremy Parzen, Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences
“Visitors to New Orleans are often surprised by the ways in which this putatively French and African city turns out to be deeply Italian. Liz Williams’s book helps us understand how Sicilian food turned into New Orleans cuisine, while giving us insights into family, neighborhood, and the city’s wider culture. All that, and recipes too!
How did Sicilian immigrants contribute to the making of New Orleans culinary culture? What are the steps that make immigrant foods into everyone’s food? In this insightful memoir, Liz Williams draws on her family’s history to show us how Sicilian food became New Orleans food. She weaves together memories, stories, and recipes to make a book that is a compelling read . . . and a promising cookbook.”
—David Beriss, coeditor of The Restaurants Book: Ethnographies of Where We Eat
Found an Error? Tell us about it.
