From KCRW, I'm Evan Kleinman, and this is good food.

Summers around the corner, and as travel season looms, we begin with a bit of advice from

Domenica Marquetti.

I always tell people, if you want to know a place and know the locals, go to the bakeries.

After spending the last two weeks in Italy, I concur.

I thought a lot about Domen's new book Italian cookies, as I explored Sicily and Umbria and stumbled into

neighborhood bakeries. They quite literally keep the hearth going for these long-time

culinary traditions. Dominica is the writer behind one of my favorite substacks about Italian food.

It's called Buona Domenica, a play in her name, which means Sunday.

And every Sunday, she sends out an engaging story and recipe with beautiful illustrations.

Her new book, Italian Cookies, may be the first regional

cookie book I've seen. And it might change minds when it comes to the genre. Hi, Domenica.

Hi, Evan. How are you? Oh, good. Where's your family from? My family is from several regions in Italy. My mother was born and

raised in Abruzzo, Italy, which I like to say is mid-calf on the boot. So it extends from the

Appanine Mountains.

If you go east of Rome, you'll sort of hit the border within an hour or so.

And from the Appanine Mountains, it goes out to the Adriatic Sea on the east.

It's a beautiful rural green region, and she was born and raised there.

My dad, who is actually born in the U.S. in Rhode Island,

his folks were from Isernia in Molisa,

which is a small region kind of right attached to Abruzzo,

and also Lazio, the region that contains Rome. So mostly that mid part of central section of Italy.

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