Italian Books - Page 23

Eating in Italy: A Traveler's Guide to the Hidden Gastronomic Pleasures of Northern Italy

Faith H. Willinger

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Grab this book and your forchetta (fork) and head to Italy for a tantalizing tour of tastes. Faith Heller Willinger is an American living in Italy who has devoted her taste buds to sampling and reporting on the best Italian kitchens have to offer. If you think Italian food equals pizza and spaghetti, the variety of offerings found in the 11 northern regions explored in this book will astound you. Each regional section begins with helpful explanations of Italian dishes from local menus. Next, the wine and food specialties are temptingly presented with interesting tidbits about production methods and historical origins. For example, grissini, yard-long breadsticks of the Piemonte region, were first made in 1668, when "the Savoia court doctor, Don Baldo Pecchio, had the court baker whip up some crunchy, thin and easily digestible breadsticks for the sickly Prince Vittorio Amadeo II, who suffered from 'intestinal fevers.'" Each section is finished off with a listing of restaurants and inns, organized by city. If you aren't sated yet, Eating in Italy also provides gelato flavors, a key to Italian opening and closing hours, types of pasta, wine terminology, and a food glossary.

Regional Foods of Northern Italy: Recipes and Remembrances

Marlena De Blasi

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Marlena de Blasi's life-long love affair with cooking began at age 9 on a beach along the coast of Liguria, Italy. There she met an elderly woman roasting potatoes coated with rosemary, olive oil, and salt over an open fire. "It was then," de Blasi writes, "that I began to understand that the way people eat and drink is more a measure of them than all the other measurements...." In her book, Regional Foods of Northern Italy, de Blasi finds that her adopted homeland is filled with tastes, smells, and textures that evoke far more than great meals--they are the stuff of memory and dreams.

Regional Foods of Northern Italy focuses on 10 "gastronomic regions," areas in which the author has worked, lived, and cooked: Tuscana, Umbria, Romagna, Emilia, Veneto, Lombardia, Piemonte, Val D'Aosta, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and Marche. The recipes in this book are, as de Blasi explains, only "interpretations" of these regional cuisines, since it would be nearly impossible to replicate the exact qualities of the local ingredients--the sweet white butter of the Romagnans or the chile peppers of La Marche. Still, wherever it's cooked, Pasta di Alberto Bettini, with its lacing of basalmic vinegar, is a loving expression of its native Emilia, while so simple a meal as olive oil drizzled over bread and eaten with a glass of red wine evokes the ageless hills of Tuscany. Whether you live in Stockholm or San Diego, Marlena de Blasi's fine collection of recipes can transport you--for the length of a meal, at least--on an extraordinary journey through Northern Italy. So Buon viaggio--e Buon appetito!

Two Meatballs in the Italian Kitchen

Pino Luongo, Mark Strausman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

When two great chefs—buddies and business partners for twenty-odd years—decide to write a cookbook about the simple Italian food they love, you get decades of experience, sage advice, and wonderful recipes. And you also get a few great arguments thrown in along the way, as Pino and Mark debate the right way to make everything from meatballs to pot roast to eggplant parmigiana.

Of course, the issue is not whose recipes are better—Pino and Mark would be first to praise each other's food. And it's not about a right or wrong way. It's about preferences in ingredients, technique, and approach.

Pino, a native of Tuscany cooking in America, is a purist. His food is grounded in tradition. Mark, a New Yorker, loves the Italian-American cooking he grew up with. Each has his favorite recipes (see back cover) and his own way, but they're bonded by a shared philosophy that the simplest food is the best, and a shared desire to please families, friends, and loyal customers with food that makes them happy.

So here are nearly 150 delicious recipes representing the best of Italian and Italian-American cooking from not one master but two, with text that teaches, dialogue that's lively, and photography that's gorgeous. There's no question about who reaps the rewards of their friendly competition—it's the reader, hands down. Whether you make...

• Pino's Oven-Braised Lamb and Artichokes with Oven-Roasted New Potatoes and Spring Onions or Mark's Braised Holiday Capon with Sweet Potatoes and Roasted Brussels Sprouts
• Mark's Chopped Roman Salad or Pino's classic Caesar Salad
• Pino's Mushroom Risotto or Mark's Farro with Button Mushrooms, Cherry Tomatoes, and Goat Cheese
• Mark's Pears in Vin Santo with sweet Polenta or Pino's Neapolitan Cheesecake

...the end result is the same—unpretentious food that is timelessly pleasing. This is home cooking at its very best.

The Classic 1000 Italian Recipes

Christina Gabrielli

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Short, sweet, and easy 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.

There are so many Italian cookbooks available! But this one is unlike the others: It's very well-written. It's recipes are brief, but clear and easy to follow. Its dishes are tasty, and with 1000 recipes they cover the broad spectrum of Italian cooking. And its ingredients are already in your home - you don't need to search for some obscure item like so many other cookbooks force you to do. No, this cookbook keeps Italian cooking what it ought to be: short, sweet, and easy.

Editorial Review:

What is it that makes us love Italian food so much? Why is it that there are so many successful Italian restaurants (including pizza parlors and some of the newest thriving restaurant chains in America) everywhere you go? Is it how irresistible a good pasta dish is? Is it the passion that Italians put in their cooking? Whatever the reason there's no denying that Italian food is one of America's preferred cuisines. Here is the definitive text on all the classic Italian dishes you could ever want to cook made available just when interest in Italian home-cooking is experiencing an all-time high.

Unplugged Kitchen: A Return to the Simple, Authentic Joys of Cooking

Viana La Place

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Delicious writing --- my favorite book about food. 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Before I begin, let's get one thing straight: I don't cook. I HATE to cook. I grew up dodging my mom's requests for help in the kitchen, reasoning that if I never learned to cook, I'd never be trapped in the domestic drudgery of slaving over a stove for myself or anyone else. Eating disorders, weight wars, and a long ambivalent relationship with food ensued.

This book was one of the best things that happened to me after I started healing myself from these woes. La Place pares down the processes of "cooking" to their essence: choosing, preparing, and enjoying the nourishment we all need to stay alive. She lists simple tools that bring the cook into direct contact with the lovely colors, shapes, smells, and textures of food --- a sharp knife replaces the food processor, for example --- and suggests a basic pantry of ingredients to have on hand for a nearly endless variety of delicious combinations. There are also shopping tips, ideas for reducing waste in the kitchen, wonderful memories of favorite meals, excerpts from classic writings on food, and more.

La Place's writing is inspiring yet down to earth, and the recipes are lovely, wholesome, and extremely simple. This, I suspect, is why this book is out of print --- there's no hype here, no trendy ingredients or complicated gadgets required, and thus, not much to sell. Too bad. It's held a place of honor in my kitchen from the day I got it, and would no doubt add a healthy dose of simplicity to many more.

If you're lucky enough to find a copy, get it.

Editorial Review:

One is quickly motivated to follow Viana La Place's advice in Unplugged Kitchen, which is to simplify what you cook and how you prepare it. More than a cookbook, this is her manifesto on bringing back the simple pleasures of honest, good food in everyday eating. An artfully designed and illustrated work, it includes recipes for such humble Italian dishes as Penne with Roasted Tomatoes, Panino (a kind of sandwich) of Grilled Portobello Mushroom, and Green Peas Cooked Pearl Onions and a Lettuce Hat. Using the best ingredients is essential. Part of La Place's purpose is to promote a demand that will make these foods more available to all of us.

The Il Fornaio Pasta Book

Maurizio Mazzon

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In Italy, eating is about much more than simple nourishment--it is a pastime, an art. Italians love to eat, and love even more to share with others the authentic dishes of their regions. Here, Maurizio Mazzon, executive chef of Il Fornaio's almost two dozen restaurants, indulges that cultural urge with a collection of his own favorite recipes gathered from all 20 regions of Italy. Not just another pasta book, this one offers unusual recipes that you won't likely find outside of Italy: Beet-Flavored Pasta Stuffed with a Ricotta-Beet Filling Topped with Brown Butter and Poppy Seeds, Eggplant-Potato Dumplings with a Tomato-Basil Sauce, and Pasta Stuffed with a Wild-Greens Filling and Topped with a Buttermilk Sauce, to name just a few. Mazzon also includes simple yet elegant versions of classics found in Italian restaurants throughout the U.S., such as Spaghettini with Tomato-Basil Sauce, Prawns and Pasta Ribbons with Pesto, and Buccatini alla Carbonara. Many of the recipes are quite complicated, but the elegant results are well worth the effort. One of Mazzon's favorite Italian proverbs says, "When the stomach is full, the heart is happy." If this is true, Mazzon's book is sure to leave a trail of happy hearts. --Robin Donovan

Roman Cookery: Ancient Recipes for Modern Kitchens

Mark Grant

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Fun read but flawed cookbook 3 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Roman Cookery is a great read for the fact that Graves provides fascinating insight into ancient cooking techniques and this portion of the text is well researched and presented. As a cookbook however, Roman Cookery has its flaws. A lack of serving sizes is definitly the most striking of these omissions but a general lack of description and explanation makes obtaining the desired end a difficult process. While a couple dishes turned out great a majority were either overcooked or needed more or less of the ingredients to make the meal work (not spices or other opinionated deviations but the neccesary steps such as the amount of flour needed to make dough as opposed to batter, for example).

All in all I would recommend picking up the book to experiment with some side dishes here and there and to read the historical discourse on culinary techniques but don't try to plan a week of meals out of the book or else you may find yourself frustrated in the process.

Editorial Review:

Here is a complete range of traditional Roman dishes, such as olive oil bread flavored with cheese. Included are explanations of the cultural values Romans ascribed to food and the social context in which it was prepared and eaten. While most Roman cookbooks detail complex banquet food enjoyed by only a tiny social elite, this cookbook provides easily made recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner that can be enjoyed by everyone.

The Tuscan Year: Life and Food in an Italian Valley

Elizabeth Romer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellent tableau of Tuscan Life. Better than Most 5 out of 5 stars.
25 of 29 people found this review helpful.

A few months ago I reviewed two books on Tuscan life and cuisine, `Ciao Italia in Tuscany' by PBS series host Mary Ann Esposito and `Simply Tuscan' by New York City restaurant chef / owner and curio shop impresario Pino Luongo. Neither book impressed me as giving a genuine picture of life in Tuscany, especially as it was before EuroAmerican homogenization took over. This book, `The Tuscan Year', Life and Food in an Italian Valley' by textile artist and Tuscan resident Elizabeth Romer is the real deal. The venue is an isolated valley in the southeastern corner of Tuscany, genuinely rural in that it is several dozen miles from the large cities of Florence and Sienna. The feeling the author gives about this lovely environment reminds me of the admittedly artificial feeling of lyric isolation from the cares of the world in the very obscure movie `The Hidden Valley' based in an isolated Swiss valley community surrounded by the ravages of the 30 years war.

The major text of the book is in twelve chapters, one for each month of the year, beginning with January and ending with December. There are very few illustrations, limited to a few simple line drawings opening each chapter. The text is divided roughly equally between culinary information and recipes and non-culinary tales of the domestic, agricultural, and animal husbandry. The highest praise I can give this book is that it has a strong kinship in the style and quality of its content to Patience Gray's great culinary journal `Honey from a Weed' which I have been attempting to accurately review for over six months now.

The main characters of the story are not the author and her family, but a native Tuscan family of Orlando and Silvana Cerotti "of the remote mountain area between Cortona and Castiglion Fiorentino. They have a single son and they run their estate and live their lives in a traditional manner. They do this from choice not necessity. Their lives are bounded by the land, which they use to its fullest extent, and in this way they are virtually self-sufficient. Their property is extensive, stretching over 400 hectares, and includes acres of forest and arable land, streams, vineyards, many small houses and their own imposing fattoria with its surrounding walled kitchen garden, olive groves, chapel and outbuildings."

The most enheartening part of this story is the fact that the Cerotti's and their family and farm hands have been successful in maintaining a lifestyle that has the feel of dating back to the Renaissance, if not earlier. This is not a story of an agricultural estate in irreversable decline, although the family has cut back on some farm resources such as the herd of pigs. Rather than maintaining 100 swine, the family buys a pig each year and has it slaughtered and butchered by a professional travelling butcher. All the `charcuterie' is done on the premises by the butcher or the family. The hams are cured by Silvana and hung to dry in the attic. Orlando takes care of sausage making with the butcher.

All the recipes are given `in context' in the month when their ingredients are in season and, where appropriate, in the liturgical season most appropriate for the dish. There are precious few culinary tips in the recipes and all are written in a narrative fashion, with no neat lists of ingredients and careful quantities, well-defined prep instructions, and numbered steps in the preparation. This is as much a book on anthropology as it is on things culinary. That is not to say the recipes cannot be made by an American suburbanite. If you have basic cooking skills and good instincts, you should have no problems with these recipes. Just be sure to read the author's notes on measuring at the end of the book. She is very much the student of Elizabeth David when it comes to weights and measures, using the proper Englishman's teaspoon, tablespoon, soup spoon, and teacup as measuring devices. The author gives some correlations of these devices to our shiny stainless steel measuring devices, but as Ms. Romer points out, Silvana used no measuring devices at all, so if I were you, I would get the lay of the land and proceed to measure things out by the seat of your pants. You will probably get a much more desirable result than if you try to exactly translate the measurements into the metric or something equally precise and irrelevant.

My only reservations about the culinary contents of the book are in the recipes for brodo (stock) and in the absence of a recipe for the salt-free Tuscan bread. The brodo recipe calls for boiling the stock for three hours, which violates absolutely every single stock recipe I have ever read, in that stock ingredients are to be just brought to the edge of a boil, then simmered. Also, the rationale for the saltless Tuscan bread is given in great detail, but there is no recipe for same, and, I suspect you may have a very hard time finding true saltless bread in an American suburb. My local megamart carries a Tuscan loaf, but I will bet more than a few lire (or euros) on the fact that salt was used in the recipe.

This book is first and foremost a delight to read. At the same time it is a valuable scholarly source document for a lifestyle which seems to be disappearing from around the world. Grab onto it and savor it while you can.

Highly recommended to readers and cooks alike.

Editorial Review:

Month by month, Elizabeth Romer details a year in a Tuscan kitchen. Noting farm recipes calling for olive oil measured in wine glasses, Romer recounts the way of life folks in Tuscany have enjoyed for centuries. In winter they spin wool and cure quantities of prosciutto. In springtime the pecorino cheese is made, while in summer the farm is ripe with corn, pears, and sweet peas. Then, of course, comes autumn, the time for wine, the time of the harvest. The rhythm of life naturally follows the foods of the seasons. You shouldn't read it without some good food nearby.

Umbria: Regional Recipes from the Heartland of Italy

Julia della Croce

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

With food like Fried Chicken Marinated in Sage, Rosemary, and Garlic, and some of Italy s most gorgeous countryside, it s little wonder Umbria is becoming such a popular tourist destination. Home to beautiful hill towns such as Deruta, Perugia, and Assisi, plus a culinary history that dates back to the Etruscans (Italy s oldest and perhaps most fascinating civilization), Umbria rejoices in hearty dishes rooted in vegetables, legumes, grains, and farm-raised meats and redolent of herbs and bold sauces. Acclaimed cookbook author Julia della Croce takes us on a stunning visual and gastronomic tour with recipes for dishes such as Penci with Sausage, Lemon, and Nutmeg Sauce and Lorella Puccetti s Lentils with Seafood, which perfectly illustrate Umbria s simple, everyday style of cooking. Her 56 recipes are spiced with photographs of the food, the countryside, the markets, and the people, with local lore and insider tips on the best Umbria has to offer. An invitation to the heartland of Italy, Umbria is a gourmet feast for the eyes and the palate.

The Everything Italian Cookbook: 300 Authentic Recipes to Help You Cook Up a Feast! (Everything: Cooking)

Dawn Altomari

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

An easy-to-use resource packed with 300 authentic Italian recipes 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

The Everything Italian Cookbook is an easy-to-use resource packed with 300 authentic Italian recipes, from Antipasto Salad, to Lobster Risotto, to Roasted Red Peppers, to Almond Loaf, and a great deal more. An introduction offers a brief overview as well as a handful of tips and tricks for flavorful classic Italian cooking, and the instructions are clear and straightforward. Most recipes have ingredient lists with portions designed to serve 10 people, making The Everything Italian Cookbook particularly ideal for planning large family meals with leftovers or dishes for party gatherings.

Editorial Review:

It’s no wonder Italian food is one of the most popular ethnic cuisines in America—after all, who can resist hearty soups made with the freshest vegetables and herbs, tender meats packed with the best spices, and thick sauces paired with pastas and raviolis? Certainly not you!
Teeming with 300 of the most authentic recipes you’ll ever find, The Everything(r) Italian Cookbook is the ultimate introduction to Italian cooking. You’ll prepare everything from fresh salads and delicious seafood combinations to tasty flatbreads and delectable desserts, including:

Clam-Stuffed Portobellos

Apple and Pork Sausage

Orange-Poached Salmon with Prosciutto

Classic Chicken Parmesan

Roasted Potato and Garlic Gnocchi
Complete with helpful cooking tips, The Everything(r) Italian Cookbook brings the unmistakable taste of Italy right to your own kitchen!