By Kristine M. Kierzek

Everything in Lidia Bastianich's world comes back to food. It is the defining element and guiding force in her life, from memories of her grandmother in Italy to the family restaurant business she created. For the past 17 years, she's hosted her Emmy award-winning public television programs sharing Italian cooking. She's also written 10 cookbooks and three children's books.

Her latest book offers 400 recipes and nearly 100 pages of definitions and cooking techniques, but not a single photo. Guiding readers through the necessities of traditional ingredients and how to use them, along with definitions for Italian food words and phrases, Bastianich imparts a lifetime of home cooking and four decades of professional kitchen experience into "Lidia's Mastering the Art of Italian Cuisine: Everything You Need to Know to be a Great Italian Cook" ($37.50, Alfred A. Knopf). She wrote it with her daughter, Tanya Bastianich Manuali.

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