Travel is tamped down for the time being, but I’m daydreaming in my kitchen — Spain, and especially Italy, tempt me. So off I go with a raft of unfamiliar recipes to try, thanks to “Friuli Food and Wine: Frasca Cooking from Northern Italy’s Mountains, Vineyards and Seaside.” Frasca cooking? Frasca is a restaurant in Boulder, Colo., that features Friulian fare, and the book’s authors — Bobby Stuckey and Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson — are its owners, working with the writer Meredith Erickson. Friuli, or Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the region of Italy east of Venice that nudges Croatia, is flourishing wine country with a particularly rustic cuisine that has some Eastern European touches. Horseradish in a radicchio salad is one example. For tagliolini al Portonat, a simple restaurant dish, the authors insist on the region’s San Daniele prosciutto, which is sold in the United States. They are keenly aware and helpful when it comes to finding ingredients. The text transported me back to the underappreciated area that I loved visiting not long ago.
“Friuli Food and Wine: Frasca Cooking from Northern Italy’s Mountains, Vineyards and Seaside,” by Bobby Stuckey, Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson and Meredith Erickson (Ten Speed Press, $50).
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