Frank Fariello's Memorie di Angelina: Where Italian Cooking Lives and Breathes

Memorie di Angelina Italian food the way Italians actually cook it, with recipes rooted in family tradition, regional authenticity, and a deep love for the craft. memoriediangelina.com

Frank Fariello started Memorie di Angelina in 2009 to preserve his grandmother Angelina's recipes from Apice, a small town in Campania. What began as a family archive has grown into one of the most respected Italian cooking resources in English, with over 500 recipes that span the regions of Italy, grounded in the same principle that guided Angelina's kitchen: cook it the way an Italian would actually cook it.

In Conversation with the Masters

What sets Frank apart from most food bloggers isn't just the depth of his recipe collection. It's his ongoing dialogue with the great Italian culinary writers. When he writes about a dish, he doesn't just share a recipe. He walks you through how Pellegrino Artusi approached it in his landmark 1891 work, how Ada Boni refined it in her encyclopedic "Il Talismano della Felicità," how Marcella Hazan adapted it for American kitchens, and then how his own family in Campania and Puglia actually made it.

Frank has written dedicated posts exploring both Artusi and Boni. He calls Artusi's self-published masterwork the Italian equivalent of Escoffier's Le Guide Culinaire, a book that helped unify a young nation's cooking identity just decades after the Risorgimento. Boni's Talismano, he notes, became the gift Italian mothers-in-law traditionally gave to new brides, hoping she'd learn to feed their son well. He draws on Anna Gosetti della Salda's regional compendium, Il Cucchiaio d'Argento, and others, constantly cross-referencing and comparing.

This scholarly instinct makes every recipe on Memorie di Angelina feel like it arrives with its full history intact. You're not just learning how to make ossobuco. You're understanding why the Milanese version differs from what you'd find in Rome, and what Artusi, Boni, and Hazan each had to say about it.

And then there's Marcella Hazan, who holds a special place. Frank bought her first two books as a high school student nearly fifty years ago, picking up a paperback copy of "The Classic Italian Cookbook" at a shop in Grand Central Station. He owns every book she ever wrote, right through to "Ingredienti," her posthumous final work. As he puts it, no one except his grandmother Angelina has had a bigger influence on his culinary journey.

Two Recipes Worth Exploring

Marcella Hazan's Pasta ricotta e spinaci

Marcella Hazan's Pasta ricotta e spinaci Marcella's recipe for pasta with a spinach and ricotta sauce, a dish Frank has kept in regular rotation for decades. memoriediangelina.com

This recipe captures everything that makes Frank's blog special. He shares how Marcella discovered the dish at a restaurant in Palermo, where the classic ravioli filling of spinach and ricotta gets turned inside out to become a weeknight pasta sauce. Frank traces the recipe's journey through Hazan's books, shares his own variation, and explains why it belongs alongside her famous tomato sauce as one of her most elegant everyday dishes.

Pellegrino Artusi: La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene

Pellegrino Artusi, La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene Frank's deep dive into the father of modern Italian cookery and the book that helped define a national cuisine. memoriediangelina.com

Frank's post on Artusi reads like a love letter to Italian food writing itself. He traces how a retired silk merchant self-published his way to culinary immortality, eventually selling over 200,000 copies in an era when that was an extraordinary number. It's the kind of post that sends you down a delightful rabbit hole of food history, and then back to your kitchen to actually cook something.

Why It Matters

There's a line that readers have used about Memorie di Angelina that captures it perfectly: it's like a virtual Marcella Hazan. Frank would probably add that it's also a virtual Artusi, a virtual Ada Boni, and most of all, a virtual Angelina.

The blog carries no ads, no sponsorships, no affiliate links. It exists purely because Frank believes these recipes and the traditions behind them deserve to be preserved and shared. In a food media landscape increasingly driven by algorithms and trending content, that kind of commitment to authenticity is genuinely rare.

Explore Memorie di Angelina: memoriediangelina.com

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