Know thy food In ‘Cucina del Sole,’ a new collection of recipes inspired by the Mezzogiorno region of Italy, Camden-based culinary writer aims to show readers that ‘food is worth caring about’

If you’re a server at a restaurant where the food writer Nancy Harmon Jenkins orders a sandwich, you’ll want to be careful when you ask whether she wants white or wheat bread. “Aren’t they both wheat?” she may quiz. The answer, of course, is yes. And the reason Jenkins finds herself repeating the question time and time again is because she is on a mission to educate the general public about the basic principles of ingredients.

For someone who cares as deeply about food as Jenkins does, misnomers, misunderstandings and misconceptions are everywhere. But she is part of a growing international community seeking to increase awareness of and participation in discerning eating and cooking habits. Her own food education began early – in her mother’s kitchen in Camden, where Jenkins grew up – and later became a career of world travels and, ultimately, in dual locations: Italy, where she has lived and worked for more than 30 years, and Maine, where she has been a vocal proponent of the eat-local movement and a supporter of farmers, fishermen and chefs.

Jenkins’ new Southern Italian cookbook, “Cucina del Sole,” is set in Italy, and is part cookbook, part travel guide, history lesson and dietary instruction. But the writer has larger goals, too: teaching home cooks and consumers about healthful foods and their preparation.

Consider the notion that a nutritious, flavorful Italian meal takes hours and hours to prepare.

Nonsense, says Jenkins, whose earlier works – “The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook,” “Flavors of Puglia,” “Flavors of Tuscany,” “The Essential Mediterranean” and scores of articles in magazines and newspapers – have established her expertise on Mediterranean cuisine. It’s not like your mother – or her mother, for that matter – taking all day to bake beans for Saturday night dinner. Simply gather together durum wheat pasta, anchovies, tuna, mint, flat-leaf parsley, garlic, breadcrumbs, lemon, salt, pepper and – always – olive oil, and within 30 minutes, you can have a robust dish fit for a hungry family.

Jenkins proved the point the other day in her kitchen where she combined those ingredients and loaded plates with Pasta del Principe, a tasty recipe from the new cookbook. The dish was surprisingly easy to make: Boil the pasta, chop the other ingredients, toss. Top with almonds if you have them.

“The great beauty of the Mediterranean is that it’s such a forgiving cuisine,” she said, combining the mint, parsley and garlic without meticulous attention to measuring. “You can’t substitute vegetable oil for olive oil, or cheddar for parmigiano. But you add a little of this, you leave something out, and you’re fine.”

The recipes in “Cucina del Sole” come from five regions in Italy – Campania, Calabria, Basilicata, Puglia and Sicily – called the Mezzogiorno, which has historically been cited more for its peasantry than for cucina di territorio, or the ingredients and specific preparations from an area. But because of the natural ingredients and uncomplicated techniques, combined with the documented healthfulness of the Mediterranean diet, the Mezzogiorno foods of yesterday and today have, as Jenkins writes in her introduction, “enormous appeal for modern cooks and diners.”

The best news, she explained over the homemade lunch that also included Pollo al Limone, or lemon and garlic chicken, is that anyone and everyone can eat this way.

In Maine, home cooks may have to plan more, travel more and, in some cases, spend more for ingredients than their counterparts in urban centers. But farmers markets and helpful proprietors have lessened the distance between purchase and dinner table. Jenkins applauded the statewide increase of food variety and availability in recent decades, but she also misses the daily wholesome ingredients in Italy, where she regularly leads culinary tours.

That morning in Camden, Jenkins made Ricotta Informata, a baked flourless ricotta cake popular in Puglia. Finding a high-quality ricotta had proved challenging.

“I had forgotten about ricotta,” she said, looking with resignation into a bowl of grainy cheese substituting for a fresh version. “I last tested this dish in Italy. I don’t understand why Maine cheese makers don’t make ricotta. I asked a goat-cheese maker once. She said: ‘Oh, no, I can’t do that’ – as if it were difficult, strange and foreign.”

She paused. Then rallied.

“You can get all these ingredients in Maine, but you have to search out the places. And you have to fight and fight and fight,” she said. “That’s what I do most of the time: fight for quality in everything. People don’t understand that food is supposed to have flavor.”

For the record, Jenkins’ Ricotta Informata was heavenly – light yet hearty, sweet like a dessert, but mellow enough to complement the fresh strawberries that flanked it. During the preparation, she had forgotten to cover the dish while it baked – “I forgot the aluminum foil,” she exclaimed 30 minutes into the cake’s baking. “Oh, well, the hell with that.” – but the result was still a succulent success.

The lesson: Even somewhat inferior ingredients and minor mistakes can yield amazing treats.

And for those who don’t have time to drive statewide collecting local or “gourmet” ingredients, Jenkins helpfully provides two sections at the end of her book: one on mail-order companies that specialize in Italian foods and a travel guide of food shops in Italy. Those shops have provided Jenkins with high quality ingredients and even some of the recipes in the book. Other recipes were gathered during her own travels in Italy and visits with chefs, food producers and women in their kitchens.

Jenkins has yet to write a cookbook about her home state, a book her fans would like to add to their shelves. “It would be partly about my growing up in Maine and partly about what’s going on now in the food industry here,” she said, imagining such a project.

Readers and home cooks can find that same flavor of local color with universal implications in “Cucina del Sole.” Can they taste Italy by following the recipes in this book?

“I’m not sure I want you to ‘taste’ Italy because you read this book,” said Jenkins. “But I do want you to take away the idea that food is worth caring about. If you take these preparations and prepare them with what you have locally, you can eat well. The best food is food you prepare yourself, food from your area, prepared with care and attention.”