Reviving Neapolitan Culinary Traditions

The Hoepli publishing house has decided to republish the second edition of ‘La Cucina Napoletana’ by Luciano Pignataro after the success of the first edition in 2016, which completely sold out. The volume is presented in a completely renewed format, with a preface by Princess Giulia Ferrara Pignatelli di Strongoli and beautiful photos by Ciro Pipoli. The design reflects the beautiful moment that Naples is experiencing, a gift for its first 2500 years. After an introductory essay on the history of Neapolitan cuisine, the book revisits the entire classic recipe collection that forms the basis of Italian cuisine on the verge of its recognition as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. The great novelty is a list of new classics signed by some of the chefs who have enhanced this tradition in recent years, renewing it and bringing it to the attention of critics and the public with recipes that have entered popular tradition: Nino Di Costanzo, Antonio Dipino, Gennaro Esposito, Salvatore Giugliano, Paolo Gramaglia, Peppe Guida, Rosanna Marziale, Maicol Izzo, Fabrizio Mellino, Francesco Sposito, and Marianna Vitale are the new standard-bearers of this tradition, which is not a museum but a heritage of an entire community that lives and renews itself. There are also chapters on Campania’s products and wines. Its success is explained by the author: ‘Naples is a journey of the soul. Every neighborhood has its own psychology, almost its own dialectal inflection, here incredible wonders are hidden where it almost seems that reality intersects with unreality, the daily with fantasy, the living with the dead because here the deceased continue to be present in small daily gestures, in dreams, in the proverbial superstition of the Neapolitan people… Food for Neapolitans is so important that they do not have a noun for it: they use the verb to eat which becomes a noun, ‘o magnà, that is, the eating.’ The book will be presented on Monday at the Feltrinelli bookstore in Piazza dei Martiri at 6 pm, with the presence of the author and Princess Pignatelli, by the journalist of Il Mattino and president of the Italian Cuisine Academy Santa di Salvo, by the honorable Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio president of the Univerde Foundation and promoter of the proposal of Italian cuisine to UNESCO moderated by journalist Antonio Puzzi. Luciano Pignataro. La cucina napoletana, Hoepli Editore. pp. 256, euro 26.90