My wish was granted when I received a copy of this book via NetGalley and Quarto Publishing for an honest review.
This cookbook was a lovely gift to receive and as I read through the wonderful and mouthwatering recipes I could just place myself in Nonna's kitchen breathing in all the wonderful aromas of each recipe as it was being prepared for each holiday meal. Some of the recipes I would love to try for next years holiday's especially Easter. I also did a little dance of joy when I found a recipe with Rabbit. Not many butchers have Rabbits to purchase but some markets do. I remember having Rabbit with Vegetables when I was a child and used to make it for my children in the 1980s. The wonderful Dessert recipes are a real find as many desserts like this are not just for the holidays but would be great for a special treat for during the week. I loved the stories and the photos of Nonna teaching the members of her family how to prepare the recipes. It is a wonderful tradition passing down of recipes and traditions  to the next generations. I highly recommend this wonderfully illustrated cookbook that is filled to the brim with some very delicious holiday food recipes.

Italian recipes fit for each holiday SIGN ME UP! Who doesn't love an authentic Italian meal shared from Italian Grandmothers?!?! I enjoyed how this cookbook grouped each recipe for a certain holiday to inspire you to add an Italian flare to your holiday meal. Some of my favorites are from Easter & practically all the Italian cookies!

I only wish that there were more pictures to go with the recipes. Great cookbook with delish recipes that don't call for a ton of ingredients and look very elaborate to host during the holidays!

Really liked this second addition to the Cooking with Nonna series by Rossella Rago. Fascinating dishes that seem unique but delicious. I love the regionality and the use of different Nonnas and their beloved dishes. Such a fun addition for any cook that loves to create Italian dishes!

I think this book would be a terrific gift for anyone with an Italian Grandmother. There are a hundred recipes which are sure to bring back memories of dishes from Nonna’s kitchen.

This is a nice cookbook filled with lots of recipes that look like real Italian food.  There is a wide variety of recipes that cover everything from appetizers and main courses to  desserts and cookies.  Some of the recipes that really stood out to me were pasta e fagioli soup, Sicilian pizza, Italian bundt cake, and soft lemon cookies with limoncello glaze.  Lots of pictures are included and the directions look easy to follow.  If you enjoy Italian cooking I think you will really enjoy this holiday cookbook.

I love the layout of this book, it is full of recipes I can't wait to try and I hope that when I recreate them they look and taste as good as they do in print. Each occasion has a set of perfect recipes so you'll be spoilt for choice. I love the pictures and little stories from other Nonna's as they give the book more of a personal touch. A must for anyone who loves Italian dishes.

This is a great tool for anyone interested in Italian cooking. This book contains many vibrant pictures and personal stories and touches.  It's also nicely separated by holiday. I love that soft Easter Bread with it's color Easter eggs that made an appearance here. The Butternut Squash Lasagna sounded amazing as well.  I'll be making the Sicilian Potato Pie. Seems like a great fall dish. Some cookbooks can be intimidating with great pictures but lacking in ease. This one is relatable and doable. 

I received an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I love Nonna's cookbooks. Nonna is back in the kitchen with Rossella Rago and other Italian Grandmothers creating this wonderful book of Italian recipes from every region in Italy. Being Italian, myself, I find it hard to find a good authentic Italian Cookbook and Nonna knows how to do it right.

This is a wonderful and fun collection of Italian holiday recipes including New Years, Valentines Day, Carnevale, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Little Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Saints Days recipes.

Recipes from Sicilian Pizza, Spaghetti in Wine sauce, Cream puffs with chocolate sauce, Oven fried chickpeas, Stuffed Zucchini, Baccala Pie, soft Easter bread, Lemon Drop Cookies, Genovese-Style Focaccia with onions and Pumpkin Tiramisu. Authentic Italian recipes that will have everyone begging for more.

It seems like every year that I go to holiday events that someone else brings the same potluck item, so I was looking for a cookbook with unique recipes to try this year.  This cookbook has some amazing looking things that I cannot wait to make!

Cooking with Nonna: A Year of Italian Holidays by Rossella Rago et. al. is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in early October.

As the title suggests, these are recipes centered around major holidays, plus saint days, carnivale, Good Friday, and ‘Little Easter’ (offering an adequate 5 recipes, in lieu of Easter Sunday’s gargantuan 17-item spread). It's overall really cute with candid photographs and profiles of nonnas. The recipes generally serve 6-8 with 2-31 recipes per holiday (and loosely consisting of a meat, starch, veg, and dessert). My favorites include oven-fried chickpeas, stuffed zucchini, lemon drop cookies, broccoli rabe and sausage frittata, parmigiano roasted veg, seafood cavatelli, rib-eye roast, bread of Saint Rocco, ricotta and meat-filled manicotti, lobster oreganata, and Ligurian butter cookies.

You have no idea how excited I am to have this cookbook!  I normally review healthy vegan or plant-based cookbooks and this is not that.  But I am Italian and I could relate so well to Rosella Rago's intro, getting all the family together, the tablecloths didn't have to match, you could eat on paper plates, all that mattered was that the family was together and the family ate the family recipes.

I do eat healthy, but I still make my family's marinara and we have that for dinner several times a month.  The one big reason why I don't think I will ever be 100% vegan: I will not give up The Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve.  I may only eat fish a few times during the year so that my body can digest it on Christmas Eve, but I want to be the Nonna one day and have my grandchildren come to my house for the family recipes of scungilli salad and baccala, because that is how I keep my Nonna alive.  One bite of those foods and it's like she's sitting next to me again!  (I've been known to break down in tears at the smell of certain Italian food cooking because the good memories of a time long gone come rushing back).

I was THRILLED to find vegan recipes like Savory Scallion Pie, Genovese-Style Focaccia with Onions, Fritters with Black Olives and Escarole Pie.

The Lamb and Potatoes recipe looks identical to what my Nonna used to make.  I won't eat lamb, but I also wouldn't be surprised if my husband made this one Sunday.

And if you have ever wanted the best Easter dish ever - there is a recipe for Pizza Rustica in here (some call it Pizza Chiena "stuffed pizza) but our family, and Rosella Rago's family, always called it Pizza Rustica.

The photo of the Soft Easter Bread brought back so many memories!

The Thanksgiving stuffing sounds just like my Nonna's with rice and sausage and ground beef.  

And Cardoons!  I had forgotten all about cardoons and my family also went to Arthur Avenue to get those and my Nonna used a similar recipe!

I actually got tears in my eyes about the Egg Drop Chicken Soup--my Nonna used to make it for me all year.  She thought I needed more protein and it was nourishing.

I have a new list of recipes to try and am looking forward to surprising my mother with some different cookies this Christmas!!

Interesting book - lots of receipes I'd never heard of, but would now like to try! I like how the receipes have been split by holiday rather than the usual 'courses'. The photos are a nice touch too

This cookbook is great!  It's like having an Italian grandmother to teach you recipes, without the bloodline!  Thanks for the opportunity to cook so many traditional Italian dishes.

Cooking with Nonna: The Holiday Cookbook by Rossella Rago
A Collection of over 100 Holiday Recipes from Italian Grandmothers

Some of the recipes used for the main holidays of the year are listed along with a few of those for some of the Saints’ Days and other celebrations. I was interested in seeing new-to-me recipes that tantalized my taste buds and had me wanting to try them out in the future. I have seen raisins in savory dishes in some other countries’ cuisines but had not thought of adding them to Italian dishes. I was curious about the double crusted savory pies and would like to try a few in the future. Add in comments and reminiscences from a variety of Nonnas, tips with some of the recipes and interesting photos and you have a delightful book to read and refer to during the holidays or any time of the year. I do not have Italian blood BUT would love to try some of the recipes in this book and serve them to my friends at some point in the near future. 

Looking through the index I realized that if I were to want to find say a list of salads or a specific vegetable and all of the recipes it would be found in it would be difficult to do so. The index lists the recipes by name but not by ingredient. Another interesting aside is that there are not as many fresh vegetable dishes (salads) as there are cooked, layered, baked or fried ones. There are many bread and sweet recipes and perhaps that has to do with the topic of holidays more than anything else. I am interested in what the first book out by this author might have and may see if I can find it in the future. 

Did I enjoy this book? Yes
Would I try any of the recipes in this book? I believe I would
Which recipes intrigued me most? Perhaps the double crust savory pies

Thank you to Quarto Publishing Group-Race Point Publishing for the ARC – This is my honest review. 

4 Stars

My review has been posted to my blog & Goodreads. 

Review has also been tweeted as usual.

Thank you! :c)

If anyone still wonders why Italians are world-renowned chefs, this cookbook will answer your questions.  The 100 recipes read like food porn:  luscious desserts, rich pastas, hearty meat and fish dishes.  The beautiful photography ably illustrates how truly delicious the offerings truly can be.  SO mesmerizing.  Don't read if you are hungry- you will run for the kitchen!!

This book has made me hungry. Every page is full of homely Italian recipes many which remind me of my travels in Italy. 
I loved the little interludes of stories from
Nonna’s about their family and traditions. 
This book screams family and love and that’s how I felt about every recipe in there  and I’m already planning to try out the butternut squash lasagne very soon.

Cooking with Nonna: The Holiday Cookbook has holiday recipes that range from Christmas to New Year's Day along with a section for Saint Days and Celebrations. Throughout the cookbook you will find plenty of color photos, and stories telling about the cooks and their recipes. You will also learn about how the holidays are celebrated thanks to the explanations given with the recipes.. This is a friendly, folksy cookbook that will warm your soul and happily fill your tummy.

Some of the recipes you'll find include:

Cream Puffs with Chocolate Sauce
Tuna Pie with Tomatoes and Parsley
Soft Easter Bread
Italian Christmas Bread
Pandoro Christmas Tree Cake with Limoncella Cream
Champagne and Strawberry Mimosa Cake
Sweet Coal (a candy that looks like coal and served during Epiphany)
Saint Joeseph's Day Minestrone
Seven Fishes Seafood Salad

Recommend.

Review written after downloading a galley from NetGalley.

I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  
From the publisher --- 
Learn to cook traditional Italian food for every holiday of the year with Rossella Rago and her Italian Nonna in Cooking with Nonna: The Holiday Cookbook.

They’re back! Rossella Rago and her adorable Nonna Romana have returned with Cooking with Nonna: The Holiday Cookbook, a traditional cookbook no Italian kitchen should be without. This Italian cookbook is a culinary treasury, jam-packed with over 125 classic holiday recipes for Italian-food lovers, including classic holiday recipes like Struffoli, Christmas Fish, Manicotti, Cannelloni, Cannoli Cheesecake, and more.

With advice from Nonnas all over the country, this unique book covers holiday classics from every region of Italy, from Milan to Sicily, and includes holiday memories from the Nonnas themselves. The Nonnas also give their personal tips on cooking for a crowd (and it's always a crowd). And, of course, no new Cooking with Nonna cookbook would be complete without Rossella's signature dishes and unique voice. 

Nothing brings the family together like delicious food around the holidays, and Cooking with Nonna: The Holiday Cookbook has everything you need to keep your family full and happy every holiday of the year. Bring the dishes and the memories you grew up with to a whole new generation of Italian Americans!

I loved “Cooking with Nonna” and this book did not disappoint, either!!! I am not really into the traditional “Holiday Food” which is easier to avoid in Canada as our Thanksgiving is the second Monday in October. (2.5 months between turkey dinners is okay with me 😊 ). This book gave me a zillion ideas on how to change it up for my VERY picky husband and VERY traditional parents. How traditional? Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, butternut squash, peas and mincemeat pie for EVERY SINGLE HOLIDAY MEAL FOR 50+ YEARs. Maybe add in mashed rutabaga if the SIL and kids show up. 
Christmas aside, there are menus and ideas for all holidays over the year: my only complaint is the price: $35USD ($50CAD) for 133 pages is WAY out of my price point for a book. For that, four stars vs. five.
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟

The foreword is a touching reminiscence of the author’s own childhood and memories of special occasions around the table with family. It gave the book a very personal feel, which I liked. I also liked the way the author included interviews with the Nonna’s who gave her the recipes. It was rather sweet and felt very authentic, which is definitely something I look for in a recipe book.

I hadn’t heard of Rosella before, but I Googled her after I read the book out of curiosity and she has a great website. Go check that out if you like the sound of the book, for sure.
The pictures were lovely, of not only the food but families around the table. And the layout was clean, straightforward and simple. This is a book which would look good on your shelves, and which you would enjoy using.

There really are recipes for every occasion, and many of them were completely new to me. The instructions were simple, and I felt I could probably give most of them a go and achieve good results. They seemed relatively simply. I mean, my efforts probably wouldn’t be as neat as the pictures in Cooking with Nonna… But I have a feeling it would still taste good. Reading them made my mouth water, so they ought to!

I think what struck me most about Cooking with Nonna was the respect for the knowledge of Rosella and other Italian American’s grandmothers. In a world which consistently undervalues the contributions made by our elders, and disregards the whole idea that they might have something to teach us, I thought this book had a beautiful counterculture sentiment. It was a real pleasure to see the values of family and the importance of our elders given a stage.

I really enjoyed reading about all the different family traditions and I thought it was a very unique concept for a book. All in all, this is a book I’d be pleased to receive as a gift, and would definitely pick up in the bookstore. And I do like Italian food, so this is one I’ll be putting to the test!