This recipe book on Italian food devotes time to the methods of preparing specialty foods, those artisan products that add touches of genius to the Italian table. This book will illuminate those touches in a series of essays examining the production of such familiar foods as pasta, bread, cheese and salami, as well as the more exotic pursuits of ageing the true Balsamic vinegar in torrid lofts in the plains around Modena or digging up white truffles in the damp woods around Alba.