No matter how far from home we go, refining our palates, leaving behind family cooking for more sophisticated fare, trading up from iceberg lettuce to arugula, from meatloaf to paté, from Velveeta to brie, we all have a special place in our hearts-and our stomachs-for our families' deliciously basic, special home recipes.

Born of the culinary traditions of the two very different sides of actress Pamela Hensley Vincent's Jewish-American family and her husband Duke Vincent's Italian-American background, The Jewish-Sicilian Cookbook recaptures, with charm, humor, and tasty and do-able recipes, the gastronomic nostalgia of two families that could be very much like any of our own.

The sixty-four recipes in this charmingly appointed cookbook range from quick salads to hearty stews and run the gamut from typically Jewish (Yetta's chicken soup and latkes) to the quintessentially Italian (Duke's Special Spaghetti). Some of the recipes represent the best of traditional modern American food, such as Manny's Hamburgers and Jack's Chef Salad, radiating a special feeling of mid-century cooking and eating, with a Fifties sensibility that goes down as deliciously well today it it did then. The common ground of all family food traditions is Food is Love, and this principle is irresistibly at play as Pamela Vincent recounts heartfelt anecdotes, describing fond memories of meals with loved ones, while sharing her favorite family recipes with all the enthusiasm of a favorite cousin presenting a cherished recipe on a much used recipe card. From a predawn breakfast of buttered matzoh and coffee with her grandfather to pasta night with Duke, The Jewish-Sicilian Cookbook will inspire readers to revisit fond food memories of their own as well as create new ones.