Palm Beach Daily News/The Shiny Sheet: “Missoni family shares look into kitchen in cookbook, at Palm Beach party”

The new Missoni cookbook provides an intimate look into the designer family’s dinner table, but it was local chef Marco Barbisotti of Sant Ambroeus who brought the flavor of those dishes to a recent book launch party.

Earlier this year, the fashion house released the Missoni Family Cookbook. It was filled with family-favorite recipes passed down through generations.

Francesco Maccapani Missoni, son of creative director Angela Missoni, has been working on this project for years and gathered 130 recipes of meals made by his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.

The cookbook provides not only a glimpse into the designer family’s kitchen but a look at the menus of their popular Milan Fashion Week dinner parties. It stays true to the family style with a colorful cover in a checkered pattern similar to those seen on catwalks, and it is filled with personal images of the family gathered to cook and eat together.

Missoni divided the recipes into five categories, including best meals for each season of the year and those perfect for dinner parties.

Barbisotti brought some of those dishes to life when two Royal Poinciana Plaza stores, luxury designer boutique Serenella and bookstore Assouline, joined forces to promote the cookbook at the sold-out event at Sant Ambroeus.

He recreated such dishes as insalata al pesto with green beans; farro salad with cherry tomatoes, olives and basil; risotto alla trevisana made with radicchio; pizzoccheri buckwheat pasta with swiss chard, potatoes and cheese; and coda di rospo alla catalana, Catalan style monkfish.

After lunch, guests including Peggy Schwartz and Rhoda Temkin of Juno Beach were treated to gelato. Both attended the event after hearing about it while shopping.

The name Missoni was enough to get Temkin through the door because she loves to wear the brand’s clothes, but for Schwartz it was the appeal of all the places she likes in the plaza coming together to create the event.

“I wanted to see what was going on at The Royal now that they’ve re-done it,” Schwartz said. “I love Sant Ambroeus, the Assouline bookstore is such a gem, and so it was just a blend of things I like.”