Italian Books - Page 14

Fg Cooks Italian

J Smith, Chris Cart, Jeff Smith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Authentic Cooking 5 out of 5 stars.
17 of 17 people found this review helpful.

Most Americans think of Chicken Parmessan, Alfredo sauce or Italian salad dressing when they hear Italian cooking. As an American soldier stationed in Italy I've never seen either of the above. They are all American inventions.

Italian cooking is very diversified. Venice is big on fish and seafood while the inland areas eat more meats. Jeff Smith's book is as close to authentic Italian cooking as one can get. The sheer number of recipes alone will give a person an insight of how Italian cuisine influenced modern American food.

The amazing thing is that there is at least one recipe that I wanted to try that I couldn't find all the ingridients for. It called for a Sicilian wine and being stationed near Venice I couldn't find it in any of the local wine stores. Great book. I will continue to use it for years after I come back to the US. It will remind me of the years that I spent here.

Editorial Review:

A new collection by a popular PBS cooking show host features tips on how to capture authentic Italian flavors, select the ideal accompaniments, and prepare such dishes as Polenta Lasagne, Broccoli di Rapa, and Tiramisu. Reprint.

The Best Italian Classics (Best Recipe Classics)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

All of their books are wonderful. This one did not let me down. 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Just as all the other books and their magazines, this book will not let you down. The recipies are wonderful. There are great explanations for each step and a story for how the recipe came about. It is a must have for your kitchen. The chicken picata recipe is to die for.

Rocco's Italian-American

Rocco Dispirito

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The star of NBC's reality show The Restaurant dishes up the mouthwatering Italian classics that made his TV show and eateries so hot.

A delicious collection of timeless family recipes -- including Mamma's Meatballs -- from culinary superstar Rocco DiSpirito!

Superstar chef Rocco DiSpirito made a name for himself by taking flavor where it had never gone before. But this decorated chef who blazed through the Culinary Institute of America and burst onto New York's fine dining scene -- landing himself on the cover of Gourmet -- actually honed his taste buds on the timeless Italian recipes handed down through his family for generations. Rocco's Italian-American lifts the lid on these age-old meals and shares their secrets, as well as the histories and family traditions that go along with them.

More than just a cookbook, Rocco's Italian-American is a celebration of the family recipes and experiences of one immigrant family in New York and is sure to become a classic. It is also filled with the wisdom of Rocco's Mamma, who is beloved by the millions who know her from her television appearances.

Each delicious recipe includes a personal note on the dish, a story associated with it, or a variation preferred by certain relatives. The book is organized by parts of the meal (antipasto, soup, pasta, fish, meat, salad, bread, sweets, and holiday menus). Rocco describes the techniques of the Italian-American kitchen and instructs on the indispensable ingredients, such as tomatoes, olive oil, basil, and beans. The book is lavishly illustrated with (old and new) photos and other artifacts and mementos from his family's treasure chest, including maps, handwritten recipes, and childhood drawings.

Now for the first time, Rocco shares his favorite family recipes, including:

--Mamma's Meatballs
--Mamma's Frittata
--Sardines with Fennel and Orange
--Farfalle with Grilled Sausage, Fennel, and Baby Artichoke
--Rabbit Cacciatore
--Red Snapper and Heirloom Tomatoes Poached in Olive Oil
--Asparagus with Besciamella
--Poached Cherries with Ricotta Gelato and Toasted Pandoro

Gelato!: Italian Ice Creams, Sorbetti, & Granite

Pamela Sheldon-Johns

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

Nice for History, Lacking as a cook book 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I would have given this 3 stars if this was a history book. Maybe even 4. The pictures are nice; the tales of old Italy are interesting.

But as cook books go, this one is pretty sad. This popped up as recommended when I purchased a Lello 4070 Gelato Junior. So I assumed it would be good to use for an ice cream maker. It is not. Only 29 of the 47 (49 if you consider 2 variations on a syrup as 3 recipes and not 1) recipes in the book can even be made in an ice cream maker. And then the proportions are all off and wildly varied, from 1-6 liters. Plus you are not making Ice cream; you are making Gelato which will freeze rock hard in your freezer. They offer 3 solutions if you are in America instead of Italy: Eat it immediately and don't save it, set your freezer to a warmer temper (where your food will spoil but the Gelato will be nice) or get a separate Haier HNCM070E 7.0-Cu-Ft Chest Freezer, White for Gelato. You could also freeze a slab of marble, let the Gelato thaw a bit, and then mix it to a creamy texture on the frozen marble. Some non-ice cream maker recipes are labor intensive, like the Granatia, where you put it in a large baking dish, put it in the freezer, then take it out and stir every 30 minutes, until it is consistently crystallized.

If you want less creamy deserts that have less air and are willing to eat them immediately (or have a separate freezer) this might be exactly what you are looking for. If you are looking for recipes for your Ice cream Maker, try Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book

Editorial Review:

The perfect treat for a hot summer day, homemade gelato and its fruit-based cousins, sorbetti and granite, are easy to make and richer than ordinary ice creams and sherbets, yet less fattening. Pamela Sheldon Johns provides 50 recipes for gelato and other icy desserts, along with tasty accompaniments. Including sumptuous ice cream photos and a visual tour of Italy's famed gelaterie, GELATO! reveals the secrets of great gelato making for anyone longing for the sweet tastes of Italy.

Italian Favorites: The Best of Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Wonderful! 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 9 people found this review helpful.

I love a cookbook that has color pictures of EACH dish! Its nice to know what its supposed to look like. This cookbook has variety and makes complex interesting recipes easy for even a novice in the kitchen. I own them all and can't beleive I survived without them.

Farorite Italian Recipies 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 9 people found this review helpful.

I do a lot of Italian cooking and have a fairly large assortment of recipies. Those contained in this book a very good (I can't say enough about them)and I have not see the likes of them elswhere. I highly recommed this book.

Editorial Review:

All of your favorite recipes from the award-winning, forty-three volume Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library can now be found in four new comprehensive collector’s editions. These collector’s editions feature gorgeous, full-color images of every recipe as a finished dish, and step-by-step photographs that illuminate more challenging tasks. Written by international cooking authorities, these timeless recipe collections provide everything the home cook needs to prepare delicious, inspiring meals for friends and family.

365 Easy Italian Recipes Anniversary Edition

Rick M. O'connell

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Of all the world's cuisines, Italian is by far the most popular.whether it's the comfort of hearty southern Italian or the more delicatedelights of lighter northern Italian cuisine, the simple truth is allItalian food tastes great. Now, with365 EASY ITALIAN RECIPES,you can serve your family their favorite Italian dishes every day ofthe year.Here in one volume are all the Italian classics, from "Shrimp Scampi,"Linguine with Clam Sauce," and "Veal Piccata" "to kids" favoriten such as "Spaghetti and Meatballs", "Eggplant Parmigiana," and"Chicken Cacciatore." There are even two pasta chapters - one for dried and one for fresh - a whole section on the Italian way with vegetables, and a generous collection of antipasto dishes, which many people consider the best part of the Italian meal. One especially tantalizing chapter teaches you how to turn store-bought bread dough into pizzas, calzones, flavored bread sticks,focaccio, and old-fashioned heroes. Finally, for a real treat, try one of the recommended Italian desserts like "Biscuit Tortoni "Cassata alla Siciliana," or "Italian Cheesecake." Whether cooking for a crowd, your family, or simply indulging yourself, 365 EASY ITALIAN RECIPES will bring a bella vita toyour table.

The Ultimate Italian Cookbook: Over 200 Authentic Recipes from All over Italy, Illustrated Step-By-Step

Carla Capalbo

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Here's a gift I use all the time 4 out of 5 stars.
23 of 23 people found this review helpful.

I was fairly skeptical when my mom gave me a copy of Capalbo's THE ULTIMATE ITALIAN COOKBOOK. For starters, I'm suspicious of anything that bills itself as "the ultimate" of anything, and besides, there are so many types of cocina italiana that it would be hard to imagine that one book could do them all justice.

However, I found that Ms. Capalbo serves up a really useful book with this offering. THE ULTIMATE ITALIAN COOKBOOK is a nice survey of the various regional styles of italian cooking, and I've found it has continued to be helpful to me even though I've progressed from a novice to more of a journeyman in the kitchen. When I first received the book, it inspired me to try new things (making frittatas, making small, traditional pizzas from scratch with toppings I'd never heard of, like carmelized onions with olives). Over the years several of Capalbo's recipes have become old friends, and now serve as starting points for my own interpretations. This book is as helpful to me now (though in a different way) as it was when Mom gave it to me seven years ago.

THE ULTIMATE ITALIAN COOKBOOK is well-organized. The author presents sections on ingredients, appetizers, salads, soups, pastas, pizzas, main courses, desserts and specialties. Amanda Heywood's delicious photographs perfectly complement Capalbo's simple step-by-step instructions, which I've found really helps in a couple of ways. First, flipping through the book helps provide inspiration when I just can't think of what to cook. (I have to stress how wonderfully Heywood's masterful photography conveys *exactly* how the food will end up looking - I swear you can almost smell it while looking at the pictures. I realize now that Ms. Heywood's delightful photos are the standard by which I judge all cookbook photography nowadays.) Second, the incremental photographs of the various cooking steps really take away a novice's fear of failure. Between Capalbo's simple instructions and Heywood's excellent photographs, the recipes wind up being relatively idiot-proof. (Capalbo assumes you know some basics about cooking with the ingredients - like what type of oil to use and how hot to make the oil when cooking the garlic, but even if you don't know these basics you'll soon figure them out.)

So THE ULTIMATE ITALIAN COOKBOOK is not *really* the ultimate italian cookbook (not sure if there is such a thing - it would have to be a whole lot bigger than this), but it's a darn good resource. It's a great jumping-off point, and it remains handy and inspiring as one's skills improve. This is THE cookbook I give to friends who know nothing about italian cooking and want to learn . . . and more experienced visitors always spend a lot of time turning the pages of my copy. It's hard to go wrong with this one.

Editorial Review:

900+ full-color photos. 9 x 11 5/8.

Gastronomy Of Italy

Anna Del Conte

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A very nice reference for terms, recipes, and Italian books. 5 out of 5 stars.
18 of 19 people found this review helpful.

`the Gastronomy of Italy' by Anna Del Conte is a dandy little reference to regional Italian recipes, products, wines, and techniques. The list of the author's other works and the imprimatur of the Accademia Italiana Della Cucina demonstrates that this is no quickie knock-off by publisher, Barnes and Noble. An examination of the book's contents confirms this first impression with a very nice collection of information for the foodie, the scholar, and the traveler.

The first chapter on the `development of Italian Gastronomy' is too short to compete with full length books on the subject, but it does give some interesting perspective in twelve (12) pages, with the claim that Italians owned the leadership in European cuisine through the Renaissance, only to let it slip away to the French with the political disintegration of the late seventeenth century. By far the most interesting content of this chapter is the account of major culinary works by Italians from the fifteenth century to the present. It is a revelation to hear writers of 400 years ago advising their readers to concentrate on fresh, seasonal produce. So this was not an idea invented by Alice Waters!

The second chapter on the Italian food culture fills out the picture we get from watching `Molto Mario'. It gives a very nice little list of major Italian food markets, which is a useful guide for someone wishing to create a culinary tour of Italy. The only thing I missed was a description of `Enoteca', the name of an Italian wine bar. The chapter on the culinary regions of Italy gets down to serious business. This profile is a great introduction, but again, it cannot compete with complete books written on the subject such as Claudia Roden's `The Food of Italy', Erica DeMane's `The Flavors of Southern Italy', and Micol Negrin's `Rustico' or the classic `The Foods of Italy' by Waverley Root. But, if you just want a quick look around, this will do the job, as long as you realize there is much this chapter is leaving out.

The next two chapters are the heart of the book and the primary reason you will want to buy it. First, there are 130 pages of recipes organized by ingredient or course, with headnotes that often indicate the geographical source of the recipe. Surprisingly, several recipes also come from American and English sources such as Marcella Hazan and Alan Davidson. It is a pleasant surprise to find the recipes in such an omnibus volume written with a keen eye to guiding the amateur to getting things right. A lot of cautions and advice which could easily be taken for granted are carefully spelled out, as when the recipe for polenta describes the delicate task of slowly streaming the corn meal into the pot with one hand while constantly stirring the pot with the other. Well done Anna! The only oddity with this selection of recipes is in the fact that the meat chapter is larger than the vegetable section, with lots of space being given to veal and beef recipes. While not even close to being a `complete' selection, the choice of recipes is very representative of classic Italian dishes.

The next chapter is probably the basis for which most people will buy this book. It is a dictionary of Italian ingredients. The entries are much more than what you will find in a dictionary, but a bit less than you may find in the `Larousse Gastronomique' for French preparations. For basic ingredients such as vinegars, the entries describe how to identify good samples of the product plus a brief idea of how the ingredients are produced. For compound ingredients such as agrodolce (sweet and sour sauce), the entry gives an outline of how the product is made and how it is used, but no complete recipe (as you might find in Larousse, except that Larousse has no entry for agrodolce). Thus, this book is an admirable supplement, filling in for the French classic when it ignores an Italian ingredient. Like Larousse, the entries are written in such a way that it is easy to just start with the A's and read it as if you were reading a memoir or a novel. Well, maybe not a novel, but you get the idea. Some of the more interesting things you will find are the facts that Italy has a name for strudel as made in Venice and a name for the bouillabaisse ingredient, Racasse, which is used in Italian fish stews as a thickener. The separate section on descriptions of Italian food preparation techniques is equally interesting. It is well known that Italian bacon, pancetta, is generally not smoked, yet there is a variety of smoked `pancetta afumicatta'.

The next section on wines will not replace a good book on Italian wines, but it is an excellent resource for finding the terroir of specific wines. It confirmed something I had heard in passing that the first major Italian wines to make an impression on American taste (after the Tuscan cliché, Chianti) were Bardolino and Valpolicello from the lands around Venice. If nothing else, this chapter will impress upon you the great variety of Italian wines and how they are typically used.

My personal favorite section in this and most other books is the bibliography. And, this book has a great one, with lots of entries from both classic and modern Italian sources. Like Germany and France, but unlike the United States, Italian scholarship has produced encyclopedic volumes on regional gastronomy which, if you knew Italian, would make writing this kind of book for American audiences very easy. Makes me want to learn Italian.

While this book overlaps lots of other volumes, its paperback price makes it a valuable book for both reading and reference. If you want to know more about Italian cuisine, you could do a lot worse than to start here.

Editorial Review:

Gastronomy of Italy continues to grace the shelves of home cooks, professional chefs and armchair travellers. A constant seller, the original version of this classic text won the prestigous Duchessa Maria Luigia di Parma prize. This new edition has been totally updated, reorganised and expanded taking into account the culinary changes of the last decade, the move towards healthier eating and today's demand for a fully comprehensive reference for the kitchen. It includes a detailed introduction to the origins and history of Italian cuisine, a cook's tour of the 16 regions of Italy and their specialities, a 200-recipe section, a full A-Z reference guide to Italian Food, an explanation of terms and techniques as well as a survey of Italian wines. Superbly illustrated with historical paintings, frescoes, prints and special food photography, Anna Del Conte's Gastronomy of Italy is an essential companion, which will remain a source of reference for life.

Ciao Tuscany: Recipes from the PBS Series Cucina Toscana (Ciao Series)

Johnny Carrabba, Damian Mandola

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Recipe miss print 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 6 people found this review helpful.

The amount of salt (1 1/2 tablespoons)in the recipe Tuscan Sausage page 112 must be a miss print. It was too salty to eat. An expensive and time consuming disapointment. Other than that it is a good cook book.

Just Like eating in Tuscany 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I have made serveral of the recipes in the book and each one tasted like I was back in Tuscany. Both cooks have been to Tuscany and found many great dishes and put them together in this cook book. If you want to cook like they do in Tuscany, then I would recommend this book to you.

Their TV show is great too. Both of them love food, Tuscany, and are very funny too.

Editorial Review:

Damian and Johnny return with a colorful volume of hearty fare of Tuscan derivation. From the antipasti to dolci, these chefs offer intensely flavored dishes from that fabled west-central Italian region crowned by Florence.

Italy Al Dente: Pasta, Risotto, Gnocchi, Polenta, Soup

Biba Caggiano

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Pasta, polenta, gnocchi, risotto, soup--these are the heart and soul of Italian cooking. Simple, hearty, and filling, these dishes can satisfy any craving, any time.

Do you like pasta? Biba gives you pasta--three chapters of pasta, eighty-seven recipes in all. Prefer your pasta stuffed? How about Eggplant-Goat Cheese Tortelli with Fresh Tomatoes and Black Olives or Spinach Cannelloni with Duck and Wild Mushroom Stuffing? Want to try a new spin on lasagne? Lasagne with Walnut Pesto and Ricotta might be just the thing. If you like to keep it simple, Biba can feed your hunger with inspired but quick-to-the-table recipes like Spaghetti with Hot Anchovy Sauce or Pasta with Spicy Broccoli.

Polenta and gnocchi are the quintessential Italian comfort foods and Biba's hearty recipes serve up satisfaction and surprising variety--Potato Gnocchi with Osso Buco Sauce; Saffron Gnocchi with Mushrooms, Prosciutto, Asparagus, and Cream Sauce; Polenta with Fontina, Butter, and Sage; and Soft Polenta with Pancetta, Garlic, and Hot Pepper, to name only a few.

Risotto and soup--what better choices can one have on a cold, wet evening? Whatever you're in the mood for--or have on hand--there's a risotto to fit the bill. Savor Risotto of the Fisherman; Risotto with Roasted Butternut Squash; Risotto with Three Cheeses; or Risotto with Sausage, Beans, and Red Wine. And soup lovers will delight in what Biba has to offer--from thick vegetable minestre like Tuscan Chick-pea and Pasta Soup and Artichoke, Leek, and Rice Soup to lighter fare like Angel Hair in Broth.

Italy at Dente keeps the flavors direct and the recipes simple. If you like Italian, this is a cookbook for the kitchen counter.

Italy al Dente is Italian food that is "just right." There singular recipes are perfectly on target -- precisely the food we want to eat every day, day after day: the simply perfect pasta, flavor-filled gnocchi, hearty soups, steaming risottos, and comforting polenta -- the tastes we crave when we think Italian.

Legions of Biba admirers -- who have brought hundreds of thousands of copies of her cookbooks -- know that no one hits this high note quite as well as she does. Recipe after recipe, each is a peak moment, with dishes like Simmer Spaghetti with Uncooked Tomato Sauce Squash-Eggplant Tortellini with Butter and Sage, Ricotta Gnocchi with Walnuts and Gorgonzola, Barley and Porcini Mushroom Soup, Soft Polenta with Bolognese Meat Sauce, and Risotto with Roasted Butternut Squash. This is simple cooking at its best.