Cucinare: Healthy and Authentic Italian Cooking for the Whole Family

By Marco Bianchi

In this gorgeous full-color lifestyle cookbook, the Italian cook, television personality, and bestselling cookbook author offers personal tips and tricks on maintaining a healthy diet and provides 65 of his favorite Mediterranean recipes to help you eat deliciously and live well.

"What do you eat on a typical day?" This is the question Italian cook and television personality Marco Bianchi is frequently asked. A food mentor revered for his expertise in maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle, he believes that one’s daily food regime is the key to reaching and sustaining health and happiness. Now, for the first time, Marco opens his home in Milan and shares insights on eating and wellness, as well as some of his favorite recipes—everything necessary to feed the body, mind, and soul.

Cucinare is an exciting behind-the-scenes look at Bianchi’s everyday life, captured in nearly 200 color photographs. In talking about healthy eating, he reminds us that the most often overlooked items for a good, balanced diet are already in the pantry and fridge. He dispels myths involving the science of nutrition and enthusiastically demonstrates his art, giving you the step-by-step instructions and simple ingredients to create delicious, healthy dishes, including:

Apple Walnut Salad with Balsamic Honey Dressing
Mini-focaccia Breads with Seeds and Olives
Roasted Cherry Tomatoes with Onions
Pasta with Eggplant, Taggiasca Olives, Capers, and Mint
Mediterranean Sushi

Eating well isn’t a mystery, Bianchi makes clear. The key to building a foundation for good health starts at the dinner table. Mangia!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9780062958877

Book preview

© Alex Alberton and Silvia Pellegrinato

10 Things I Do for Better Health

Here are the reasons behind some of the choices I make in the kitchen. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that good taste and pleasure are not compatible with healthy eating.

Why do I choose whole-grain items? Why do I eat very little sugar? Why do I love extra-virgin olive oil so much? The answers to these—and other—questions can be found in the following pages. I hope these answers will clear up any questions you have and provide clear explanations of scientific data in order to help you understand how easy it is to eat with your head in a healthy way.

© Alex Alberton and Silvia Pellegrinato

1

Why do I limit salt and replace some of it with herbs and spices and always say to cook in lightly salted water?

It’s simple! The average Italian man consumes more than 4,100 milligrams of sodium (about 1¾ teaspoons or 10.6 grams salt) per day, and the average Italian woman consumes nearly 3,200 milligrams sodium (about 1⅓ teaspoons or 8.2 grams salt). Both are nearly double the 2,000 milligrams sodium (about 1 teaspoon or 5 grams salt) suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO). It’s important to find alternatives for flavoring your food. Too much salt causes hypertension, cardiovascular disease, obesity, osteoporosis, and