“America is technically home but my heart and soul is in Calabria,” says Rosetta Costantino, author of My Calabria, Southern Italian Desserts and culinary instructor of traditional southern Italian recipes and tour guide in Calabria, Sicily, and Puglia.

Costantino was born and raised in Verbicaro, Calabria a small wine-producing hill town at the tip of the Italian boot. It was there that her parents, Vincenzo and Maria, began to shape her love for food and the land. “My father was a master cheesemaker and winemaker, tending our family’s olive groves, vineyards, and farm where we also kept goats and sheep. Almost all of our food came from our property or the nearby Mediterranean.”