The Naples table - Recipes, Traditions, and Stories from the City That Cooks with Its Heart #1003315

This book is organized to move roughly in the order a Neapolitan meal itself would move: from pantry and street food, through pizza and pasta, to second courses, feast days, and dessert, before closing with practical guidance for cooking this tradition outside Italy. You do not need to read it in order, but the early chapters on the pantry are worth reading first regardless of which recipe you turn to, since they explain the small handful of ingredients that recur throughout every chapter that follows.
Every recipe lists a serving size and a time estimate, though Neapolitan home cooking is rarely so precise in practice — treat both as a guide rather than a rule, particularly the timing on slow-simmered sauces, which are done not at a fixed minute but when they look, smell, and taste right. Boxes marked Cooking Abroad appear throughout the book wherever an ingredient or technique is likely to be hard to find or reproduce outside Campania, offering a specific, tested substitute rather than a vague suggestion to "use whatever is available."
Shaded sidebars gather the anecdotes, superstitions, and small cultural notes that a strict recipe format has no room for, but which are, in many ways, just as important to understanding this cuisine as any list of ingredients. Read them as you would a conversation with a Neapolitan grandmother standing over your shoulder while you cook — opinionated, occasionally contradictory, and always offered with real affection for the person about to eat the results.