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Anna Tasca LanzaAnna Tasca Lanza was born in the Villa Tasca and grew up on the family estate, Regaleali, spending winters in nearby Palermo. During her childhood, wheat was grown at Regaleali, but after the Second World War her father switched to wine. Today, the vintages of Regaleali-Tasca d'Almerita Winery are world-famous.
Anna met her future husband, Marques Vences Lanza di Mazzarino, at her coming-out ball, and she married him two years later. After their daughter moved on to college, she went to work at the family winery and later opened what has become an internationally renowned cooking school at Regaleali. At the same time, she wrote her first book, The Heart of Sicily, which tells the story of a year on the estate enriched by family lore and recipes drawn from the region's rich cuisine.
"When my first book was published, I thought I would never write another," Anna admits in her introduction to The Flavors of Sicily. "But then I began thinking about all the things I hadn't said. I had hardly touched on old customs and traditions beyond the borders of Regaleali, the Tasca estate and winery, and I also wanted to tell about new discoveries that I'd made.... My curiosity and my determination to record as many aspects of daily life as I could, at least in the domain of food, kept calling me back."
The result was The Flavors of Sicily, her second book. She is also the author of Herbs and Wild Greens from the Sicilian Countryside and is at work on her autobiography, Diamond Earrings.
In her foreword to Flavors, Carol Field observes that Anna Tasca Lanza's affinity for Sicilian cuisine and culture emerges powerfully in her writings, her teaching and her life. "Watching Anna in her kitchen, where she is always in action, and following her on her rounds of little-known Sicilian island towns, it becomes clear that she has a vocation and a true passion for preserving the tastes and traditions of Sicilian food as a way of preserving the culture," Field writes. "Sicily through Anna Tasca Lanza's eyes is an experience apart--just as walking across the carpet of wild chamomile in the courtyard of her house, smelling the fragrance released as we arrive at her front door, is a powerful sensory introduction to her passion for Sicilian plants, agriculture and tradition."
The Flavors of Sicily is a testament to Anna Tasca Lanza's love for the people of Sicily and her commitment to tell their story. "The country people of Sicily have been very generous to me, inviting me into their homes and sharing with me their cooking traditions and secrets. I hope I have repaid their trust and my heritage by recording in this book the past that remains alive today," she writes in the book's introduction. "It is my hope to tell that story to readers around the world, both to those Sicilians who left their native land to seek their fortune and to people everywhere who care about history as it was lived by everyman."
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