Thanks to all our friends that have given us the strength and the recipes to pursue our love for the good things in life. I hope you like what you see and please drop us a message if there is something missing.

Please send us recipes so that we can add them to our website. We will credit all the recipes under the persons name and can even create a seperate page that links to their recipe page. This way you can tell your friends that your recipes are on the net. I hope this venture makes us meet special people so that we can share all the good things in life and learn more about Italian cooking together.

We also have a Culinary Vacation Section giving you a brief description of the owners and where they are located in Italy. This way the next time you visit Italy you have a good road map if you love to learn about Italian Cooking.

We will continue to offer the best italian recipes that we can possibly find and create thanks to my lovely wife and great children. I would also like to thank my mother and mother in law for their lovely recipes and of coarse all the family members that have given us advice to make the Italian Cook website a success and a wonderfull addition to all the recipe websites on the wide world web.

Elena, Mario, Riccardo and Carmelo

The origins of Santa Elisabetta - Agrigento - Sicily

Saint Elizabeth - Agrigento It is said that an Arab princess, who converted to Christianity, fled from home to live among the shepherds at that time a period of poverty and scarcity.

Princess Elizabeth was a great humanitarian and provided her generosity, education and guidance to the village. She was considered a saint in the village.

In fact, the village was founded in 1620 under the name "Comet" by Mr. Nicholas Joseph Montaperto Raffadali Marquis, son of Eleanor and Peter Montaperto. In the seventeenth century it belonged to the noble family of the first Bonanno and then aiprincipi Lanza. St. Elizabeth's name was then given to the country in honor of the homonymous Saint. In 1816 the British abolished feudalism in Sicily, and in 1828 the village became a village of Aragon until 1955, when it gained self-government in a regional law 28.01.55.

A magnificent agricultural center, St. Elizabeth is distinguished by the conspicuous production of wheat, grapes, almonds, pistachios, olives and cheeses. Sheep and goats flourished everywhere.

The town of St. Elizabeth now has 3227 inhabitants (Sabbittisi) and has an area of 1617 hectares for a population density of 200 inhabitants per square kilometer. It rises on an internal hilly area, located at 425 meters above sea level. So writes Stephen Milioto in one of his books titled "Tales of the Comet" Comet, throw a handful of houses on a hill, a few people, a closed world and yet live, small and infinite, in which everything, love, passion, interest, was consumed in all private and public life, there was a faint line of demarcation, a strand from a spider web. Yet it was a condition of exclusion, loneliness, stillness, of frustration and of convictions. "

Beautiful to visit are the archaeological sites of Guastanella, Keli, Monte common and wonderful color panels that are located in Piazza San Carlo. The City Hall is located in Piazza Giovanni XXIII. St. Elizabeth, 22 Km From the province Agrigento which Santa Alisabetta is part now named Piazza San Carlo.

Piazza San Carlo (ncapu u chianu) According to tradition, there stood the church of San Carlo. Today, restored and modernized, is decorated with five beautiful ceramic panels reproducing the cycle of wheat. On January 6 of this plaza every year takes place the representation of "pastoral nardu." Corso Umberto I. The main street is about 1 km which divides throughout the entire country now named "U Capu".

At the foot of Mount City, a short walk from the town, flowing water from the spring of Cape wash common until a few years ago, which has since been named Piazzetta Dell'Unità.