The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family [Hardcover]

Laura Schenone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 17, 2007

Can a recipe change your life? A quest for an authentic dish reveals a mythic love story and age-old culinary secrets.

James Beard Award-winning author Laura Schenone undertakes a quest to retrieve her great grandmother's ravioli recipe, reuniting with relatives as she goes. In lyrical prose and delicious recipes, Schenone takes the reader on an unforgettable journey from the grit of New Jersey's industrial wastelands and the fast-paced disposable culture of its suburbs to the dramatically beautiful coast of Liguria—the family's homeland—with its pesto, smoked chestnuts, torte, and, most beloved of all, ravioli, the food of celebration and happiness. Schenone discovers the persistent importance of place, while offering a perceptive voice on immigration and ethnicity in its twilight. Along the way, she gives us the comedies and foibles of family life, a story of love and loss, a deeper understanding of the bonds between parents and children, and the mysteries of pasta, rolled into a perfect circle of gossamer dough.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Hand-rolled ravioli are ephemeral things, taking ages to prepare only to be devoured in minutes. And yet for Schenone (the James Beard Award–winning A Thousand Years over a Hot Stove) their taste encapsulates an entire domestic history and the promise of happiness, however fleeting. In this marvelous family memoir, which considers the immigrant experience from the vantage of food, Schenone, longing for an inner life where advertising cannot reach, sets off on an idealistic quest to reclaim the ravioli recipe that her Genovese great-grandmother brought with her at the turn of the last century to New Jersey, where the dish abruptly changed, breaking with tradition. In search of enlightenment, Schenone charms her way into the kitchens of ravioli-making elders in Liguria (whose recipes she shares in this book with admirable precision), then spends years trying to teach her hands the difficult art of stretching dough—an endeavor that tests her most cherished ideas of home and family and self. Her fierce honesty and relentless questioning (at what point is this an egotistical labor?), skillful handling and dismantling of family myth, refusal to romanticize Italy and historian's knack for sketching the big picture in a few broad strokes allows this poignant book to transcend the specificity of its subject matter. (Nov.)
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Review

A treat for anyone who's Italian American, and if you're not, when you finish this book, you'll wish you were. -- Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author of the Big Stone Gap series and Lucia, Lucia

A triumph of culinary sleuthing that takes award-winning Laura Schenone deep into the interior of her ancestral Liguria. -- Louise DeSalvo, author of Crazy in the Kitchen

Every page offers an embrace; this is a book to be read a gusto. -- Regina Barreca, author of Don't Tell Mama!: The Penguin Book of Italian American Writing

Laura Schenone's search for food and family in The Lost Ravioli Recipes is a journey I'm very glad I took. -- Joe Mantegna

Throughout this delightful book, she serves the reader a memorable feast of ravioli and revelations. -- Maria Laurino, author of Were You Always an Italian?

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (November 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393061469
• ISBN-13: 978-0393061468
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #436,160 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #83 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking by Ingredient > Pasta

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful storytelling and a wonderful story..., November 13, 2007

By 

K. Ekinci (Sunny Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family (Hardcover)

A moving, heartwarming, exciting memoir in which I could find stories, discoveries, and experiences which made me feel as if parts of the book reflected my culture and roots from the other side of the Mediterranean Sea (Eastern Med). This book has the potential to become an international bestseller. It is not just "Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken" but it is "THE" Lost Ravioli Recipe --across cultures! Wholeheartedly recommended !!!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous, intelligent writing from an excellent cook, January 17, 2008

By 

Art Chef - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family (Hardcover)

It's rare in the food writing genre to find an accomplished literary writer who is also a smart, talented and creative cook, and that's what readers will find in Schenone's new memoir. As a former pastry chef, author of a food memoir and fellow writer, I was smitten with the book from the opening line which is both poetic and evocative. From there, it's a page turner. Schenone is an entirely sympathetic and engagingly curious and thoughtful narrator whose voice is graceful and compelling. I enjoyed her journey from overwhelmed mother of two trying in vain to duplicate her family's famous Christmas ravioli from a cryptic recipe, to intrepid traveler seeking out the origins of the dish, to her final transformation into someone with a deeper understanding of cooking, life, family and these precious handed-down recipes we all treasure but often find baffling and inconsistent with modern life. Her constant soul-searching is fascinating as she sets out on her quest to find the real, authentic ravioli recipe, as are her descriptions of the Italian cooks and their kitchens that she pursues to satisfy a genuine craving for answers; why did her ancestors use something as ordinary as cream cheese in an otherwise authentic recipe for ravioli? What was the original use for the exotic and fascinating old ravioli tool that hung in her childhood home? Is she an 'authentic" Italian, or only a confusing diluted mix of heritages without a strong identity? What can she do to get her children (described here beautifully, foibles and imaginary friends and all)to appreciate "real" food? I could not put this book down and I doubt anyone with a love of old recipes, family stories, quests for something bigger than ourselves, or a yen for a food memoir written with passion and integrity could either. It's on my list of the best books of the year.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Christmas gift, December 7, 2007

By 

C. M. Schaffner - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family (Hardcover)

I love a mystery. And in her `The lost ravioli recipes of Hoboken' Schenone unravels a mystery through a personal journey to "uncover the truth" behind the treasured family recipe of her great-grandmother. I was hooked from the start intellectually and emotionally (yes, the book made me laugh and cry). I think the only other book I have read remotely like `Lost ravioli' is `How to Make an American Quilt', but I connected with `Lost ravioli' even more. Maybe it is my age (similar to the author's), but certainly the superb writing and many threads that come together in Schenone's latest book. One does not need to be a foodie, an Italian-American or a New Jerseyite to devour this book. One only needs to appreciate outstanding prose and a fascinating story. My husband and I read the book aloud to each other and it is our choice for Christmas gift book this year!