I really loved how you handled the Roman pastas. The idea was born during one of these back and forth trips and it just made so much sense because there was so much good food to talk about, to cook, and people to talk to, that it was an organic kind of thing. The year we moved, we had been here eight times in the last six months.

Every time we went, I started doing projects and we found ourselves in Italy more and more. Of course, we love the food, and over the years, we've just made so many friends and worked and collaborated with different chefs and people in the food industry and farmers. For holidays at first for the last 16 years with my husband but also before when I was small with my family. Why was Italy calling to you and what was the genesis of your cookbook? We wanted to know more from the intrepid author, so we sat down (over Zoom) with Thorisson to learn about the book, her thoughts on Italian food, and how it differs from French cooking techniques. “Old World Italian” is a travelogue about food and a cookbook about travel, and somewhere in between are easy-to-follow recipes that will help you vicariously venture through Italy during a time when getting to the country is nearly impossible. The book follows the Thorisson family from the mountain straddled towns of Piemonte to the lush farmlands of Abruzzo to the endless wheat fields of Sicily. The culmination of that journey is Thorisson’s new stunning cookbook, Old World Italian: Recipes & Secrets from Our Travels in Italy. Leaving her idyllic farmhouse behind, Thorisson and gang embarked (are still embarking) on an epic journey across Italy, finding regional cuisine gems, historical food traditions, and the many, many wonders that Italian food has in store. Known for her envy-inducing life with her family in the French countryside (including two beautiful French cookbooks), Thorisson and her brood decided to move to Italy, a country whose culinary traditions had a siren call she simply couldn’t resist. Mimi Thorisson is a mom, a chef, an international nomad, a nonna wannabe, and a cookbook author.

Old world kitchen