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About
At the age of eleven, the daughter of a Sicilian sharecropper, Maria Grammatico, entered the San Carlo Institute in the mountaintop town of Erice, an orphanage run by nuns who were famous throughout Sicily for their almond pastries, but who were less adept at dealing with young girls. After ten years of hard work and harsh discipline, Maria emerged with the secrets of the nuns' pastries hidden inside her head. This is the story of her carefree country childhood-her Dickensian life in the orphanage with no heat, no running water, and only wood-burning ovens-and her triumphs as an entrepreneur and a world-famous pastry chef. Bitter Almonds includes 46 of the recipes that she 'stole' from the nuns, committed to writing for the first time in these pages.
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Reviews
"An unforgettable portrait of a unique world; the preservation of a culinary art that has in some measure been lost forever; and a haunting, inspiring story of one powerful woman's triumph over cruel circumstance and culture."
Courier Lifestyles
"A window on to a way of life that has vanished."
Journal of Italian Food & Wine
"Maria Grammatico's tale, captured in a lively conversational tone by Mary Taylor Simeti, is astonishing for its account of an often joyless, rigid existence"
Courier Lifestyles