How to Eat Like an Italian

At home in Tuscany, author and Italophile Kamin Mohammadi talks fava beans, facing down Italian dinner guests and the art of making do with what you have

I LIVE IN THE HILLS that breathe,” said Kamin Mohammadi, at home in the breezy countryside northeast of Florence. Ten years ago, she was a magazine editor, living at breakneck speed amid the crowded chaos of London. She relocated to Tuscany to write—not about Italy, but about her native Iran. Published in 2011, her memoir “The Cypress Tree” follows three generations of her family, their exile in the U.K. and her own return home to reckon with her history. In her follow-up, arriving stateside next week, she writes about another kind of homecoming.

Moving...