I grew up in a flat above a butcher's shop in Bologna, where my grandmother stirred ragù every Sunday in a pot that smelled the whole stairwell up to her apartment. I cook the regional version of every dish I write about. Alla Bolognese in Emilia-Romagna and Napoletana in Campania are not the same thing, and that distinction is half the recipe.

My job here is to put the proper version of an Italian dish on your table: a pasta-and-sauce pairing that makes sense, a ragù that drinks milk before wine, a risotto that ripples on the plate. If it tastes like something a nonna would serve, we've done it right.