5 comments about The Italian Country Table: Home Cooking from Italy's Farmhouse Kitchens.

1. This book is as dull and annoying and pretentious as Lynn Rosetta Kasper's voice on the Splendid Table on NPR. Everytime I hear her I want to commit suicide. The recipes are full of things you can't really get, they're kind of dull, and basically nothing to write home about. Did I mention how dull and pretentious her stupid radio program on NPR is? This is NPR to the nth degree. Dull, dull, dull.



2. Let me preface this by saying that I love listening to The Splendid Table and I think Ms. Kasper is fantastic. She obviously loves Italian food and she's done a lot to teach folks how to cook it properly. I enjoy reading the little vignettes which accompany so many of the recipes and all of her recipes sound delicious (at least by looking at the ingredient list).
   
   That being said, I unfortunately found The Italian Country Table to be overly complicated and fussy at times. Sometimes her techniques are legitimate (for example, her technique for polenta -- long but worth it). Many times, however, they are not (in my humble opinion). Every time I want to cook something from this book, I am discouraged by something starting with, "Mince together 1 onion, 1/2 cup of parsley, 4 sages leaves and a slice of pancetta." Even to me, an avid cook, this is too much trouble. I agree that rolling your own pasta is the gold standard but for working stiffs such as myself, how about some reasonable alternatives such as buying fresh pasta and putting it through the machine a few times?
   
   Disclaimers: I have been spoiled by "Red, White and Greens" by Faith Willinger, which was my first primer to Italian food. All of her recipes are easy and almost all of them are delicious. Also - I am vegetarian so I can only comment on the vegetable and grain dishes in this book, which perhaps are not its strong point.
   
   Again, I still want to like this book -- In fact, I am trying the Tuscan Mountain Supper tonight!



3. I have had this book for years, and I have yet to make something out of it that hasn't been delicious. This one is a staple on the cookbook shelf.
   I've lived in Italy for a total of about 1.5 years (off and on), and this book really captures the flavors of "real" Italian food.



4. I have been carrying this book around with me for several days, opening and reading at every opportunity. This is a friendly cookbook. I didn't need another cookbook, I told myself! But I'm delighted to have ignored my own advice. There is so much diversity and variety to absorb in these pages, and it reads with a beautiful flavor. Full of tips and enthusiasm, just like her radio program, Splendid Table. I have used Post-It "flags" in abundance to remind me to try out selected recipes.



5. The Italian Country Table has been one of my all time favorite cookbooks. I love the tender stories and information she included about Italian food, ingredients, food history, and Italian culture. The recipes are not always easy or quick to prepare. But as one who truly enjoys her time in the kitchen, I am not at all intimidated. However, the results are always knock out delicious. Having travelled several times in various regions of Italy, I find Ms. Kasper's knowledge of the very real distinctiveness of the foods peculiar to each region quite interesting. I have purchased this book as a gift, and would recommend it as a fine representative of regional Italian cooking as well as culture.

2 comments about The Best of Gourmet: Sixty-five Years, Sixty-five Favorite Recipes (Best of Gourmet).

1. `The Best of Gourmet 2007' is a 65th Anniversary edition of recipes collected from `Gourmet' of both the last year and from the previous 65 (up to 2005) years. In most ways, it is very similar to `The Best of Gourmet 2006', which means it's an excellent source of menus for entertaining 6 to 8 people at dinner on a regular basis, when you have an aversion to repeating yourself too often.
   
   The book begins with the collection of 65 `favorite' recipes. This collection is not uniformly easy, difficult, or popular. Some, like their versions of cabbage and noodles and Caesar salad, are simple and common while the chocolate souffle cake and the Vietnamese Pho Bo (Hanoi Beef Noodle soup) are complex and exotic. This makes the section good foodie reading, to see what it is which tickles the fancy of the `Gourmet' editors.
   
   As with all `Gourmet' recipes, at least all I've seen over the past four years that I've been reading the magazine, the instructions are detailed and quite precise; however, being true to the magazine's name, they have something about them which makes them more interesting than the average `Joy of Cooking' or even `Good Housekeeping' recipe. The very best thing about the selection of `Gourmet' recipes for me is that they carry lots of recipes for classic types of dishes which are simply a bit beyond the pale of the '30 Minute Meal' crowd. This includes recipes for gratins, tarts, breads, crackers(!), souffles, braises, cakes, pies, and assembled desserts such as a charlotte. The excellent index does, however, provide nifty little clock icons by each recipe that can be done in that famous '30 minutes' or less. This being `Gourmet', I may take this with a grain of salt, and stick with Rachael Ray if you are seriously interested in FAST dishes.
   
   After the '65 Favorite Recipes' comes 18 menus, with each recipe within a menu calibrated to produce the same number of servings, something not everyone with the same objective can seem to pull off. There is no obvious pattern to the choice or arrangement of menus. The overriding criterion was, I'm sure, did it appear in `Gourmet' in the previous 12 months (in 2006, actually). Some are oriented to a location (New Mexico, Naples, Greek Seaside, Provence), some are keyed to a season (summer, winter, fall harvest), some are for a specific meal (breakfast, lunch, supper), and some are for a particular holiday (Lunar New Year, Thanksgiving (2), Christmas cocktail party, Christmas feast). The shotgun selection is less random if you happen to own several of the previous yearly `Gourmet' collections. Put them all together and you have a really fine collection of hundreds of different menus, all with the `Gourmet' imprimatur. This is by far the best auxiliary I know of to a copy of Martha Stewart's classic `Entertaining'. It's even better than anything I've seen from Martha and company. Each menu, even those for breakfast, include one or more wine selections for the menu, and they are very specific, down to the chateau and vintage year! About half of these recipes are showcased in quarter, half, or full-page pics. Unfortunately, the good editors are often not able to put the recipe and pic on the same or facing pages. Pity.
   
   Following the 18 menus, with approximately 100 recipes, is `The Recipe Compendium', with a dozen or more recipes in each of the following categories:
   
   Appetizers
   Breads
   Soups
   Fish and Shellfish
   Meats
   Poultry
   Breakfast, Brunch, and Sandwiches
   Pasta and Grains
   Vegetables
   Salads
   Condiments and sauces
   Desserts
   
   These recipes are not accompanied by photographs. Unlike the menu recipes, they are almost uniformly calibrated to `Serve 4'. This is nice, as it makes it a lot easier to match up recipes to create a menu of your own. All recipes also contain two timings, one is `active' time and the other is `start to finish'.
   
   Where appropriate, each recipe also cites special equipment and references to a `Sources' glossary where the ingredient or equipment is not available at the typical supermarket. I found two quirks in these features. One was the fact that sometimes there were references to `Sources', but the item was nowhere to be found in this glossary. The other was the reference to an `adjustable-blade slicer'. Now in a moment of cognitive befuddlement, I could not for the life of me imagine what that was, until I realized they were talking about a mandoline! This is a case like those in cookbooks translated from the French where `Herbes de Provence' is translated to `French herb collection'. The fact is that anyone who owns three cookbooks and watches the Food Network at least 2 hours a week will know what `mandoline' and `herbes de Provence' mean, and will be befuddled by a `translation'. But so much for that little linguistic rant.
   
   At a list price of $40, these books are just a bit pricy, but there is a great synergy to be had in owning several in the series. If you are really interesting in cooking and have little interest in travel or expensive restaurants, the cost of these books is a far better investment than the cost of 12 issues of `Gourmet'. One can hope that Conde Nast will come out with an index to all these volumes (It may exist, I haven't looked for it yet).
   
   Great resource for entertaining.



2. The Best of Gourmet 2007 is a collection of popular recipes featured in Gourmet Magazine. It is also a must-have for anyone who wishes to produce a meal or dessert that is out of the ordinary. If you want to dazzle your guests or surprise the green-bean casserole lot at the next potluck, use one of the recipes in this book.
   
   I was recently asked to prepare some desserts for a Christmas-themed cocktail party. Besides a fruit tarte, cheesecake, and small assortment of pastries, the hostess asked if I would make a red velvet cake. I wanted to do something different, something unexpected, because a red velvet cake is really just a chocolate cake with a lot of food coloring.
   
   Anyway, I used a white chocolate cream cheese frosting and decorated the cake with a recipe I found in The Best of Gourmet. The recipe calls for rice noodles, soaked in water, dried, deep fried, and sprinkled with sugar. In the book, these resemble great white coral leaves and are placed on top of a mound of mango sorbet. I did a little twist. I shaped the noodles to resemble snowflakes, then sprinkled them with sparkling/silver sugar. I had these sticking out of the top and sides of the cake and it looked amazing. It was easy, spectacular, and completely unexpected.
   
   The recipes can be complicated but are well worth the effort.
   
   The unique recipes, fabulous layout, and clever "menu" concept make this a book that is easy for me to recommend.

3 comments about Delizia!: The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food.

1. This is a splendid book that surveys a big, broad sweep of culinary history. It's eminently readable. Dickie employs an interesting device in this regard: each of the chronologicall ordered chapters is set in a particular place at a particular time. The most compelling sections, for me, were those that dealt with the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when nationalist projects impacted heavily on Italian foodways. An essential book to be placed alongside such classics as Waverly Root's The Food of Italy and Marlena De Blasi's volumes on regional Italian cuisine.



2. This is one of those books that is ideally read when you need a break from heavy thinking, but still want to feel that you are not reading junk. It would probably be a perfect introduction to a trip to Italy (or a book to bring with you on the same trip).
   
   First things first, although you will find a number of fun historical facts and myth-busting nuggets regarding Italian food, this is not really a history of the food itself. You will not find recipes or useful tips to use in your own kitchen. Dickie is a historian, among other talents, and approaches this book from the point of view of the relationship of the country to their food.
   
   The book moves from the Medieval Table to The Land of Plenty (modern Italy) as chapter organization. If there is a unifying theme or point, it is that Dickie makes it clear that food in Italy has been an urban and not a peasant business, directly intertwined with currents in culture and politics.
   
   The book is readable, if perhaps not as lively as it could have been. I enjoyed the book, and am planning to lend this copy to a good friend later today. I would recommend it to most people. Great for the armchair historian who also happens to be fond of eating.
   
   (I really appreciated the list of sources that Dickie appended to the book. It provided a rich source for future reading on the topic.)



3. If you think history is more than what leaders and statesmen did or do, John Dickie proves that you are right!

2 comments about Food Made Fast: Pasta (Williams-Sonoma).

1. Pasta of various kinds is one of the things that I always have in the pantry, what to do with it other than add just jarred sauce stumps me though. This book offers quick solutions to just such a dilemma.
   
   Each recipe offers simple outlined step by step instructions, with a beautiful color photograph with each one. After reading the tempting recipes and seeing the pictures, one thinks, "Yes, I can most certainly make that!" Among the 40 different recipes there is a range from traditional favorites like spaghetti alla carbonara to more dressed up fare such as gemelli with brown butter & asparagus. It also offers substituions for ingredients that may not be so readily available. For example, if you don't have broccoli rabe, then simply use broccoli florets. If you don't have Swiss chard, forget about it and use fresh baby spinach instead. The focus of this book is simple, easy fare, with a concentration on using a few fresh ingredients combined to yield the best results.
   
   The with economy in the state that it is in, pasta deserves another look. A few well chosen ingredients and the this proper guide, can have you looking forward to spaghetti Tuesdays.



2. I bought this book after seeing it at a friends house. Perfect for quick and easy meals.

5 comments about The Williams-Sonoma Collection: Pasta (Williams-Sonoma Collection).

1. This book has great pasta recipes. The fettuccine alfredo is too good for words. This book keeps in line with the series -- well-written recipes, beautiful photos of every dish.
   
   The pasta basics section has good advice on fresh pasta. I wish it would have included info on making it with a food processor. I think that's covered in the new Mastering series from WS, which is billed as more technique than recipe.



2. This is an excellent book for the home chef. It has recipes that even the most timid beginner can sucessfuly (and effortlessly) complete.
   
   It is beautifully photographed. The recipes are concise and easy to follow.
   
   I love the informative sidenotes that accompany each recipe. A beginning cook can learn a lot from reading them.
   
   I recommend this book for all cooks.



3. The recipes in this book are very good, and this book is a great place to start if you don't know many pasta recipes yet. It covers many classic dishes, so several of the recipes are not unique to this book. Each of the dishes is nicely photographed.



4. although i find a lot of williams-sonoma cookbooks to be a little thin, they always pack gorgeous photos with recipes you can usually trust. this is no exception. i made a double portion of penne a la vodka, without having tried it out previously, for a potluck yesterday. rave reviews! definitely a keeper.



5. This book is for novice cooks and discusses different types of pasta (spaghetti vs. fettuccini) and the recipes are pretty quick using boxed pasta and readily available ingredients.

3 comments about The Classic Italian Cookbook.

1. I have always considered myself an Italian cook, although myrange is considerably broader, but this book changed my whole out lookto Italian cookery. I have collected most of Marcella's books, including the latest, but this is the one I reach for first. The section on Italian style grilled vegetables has become a summer favorite and has literally changed the way I plan a vegetable garden. It alone was worth the cost of the book. The osso bucca is to die for, and in my veal poor region it has withstood the substitution of lamb shanks. Every fall I put up a years's supply of the oven dried plum tomatoes in oil and the hot peppers in oil. I was asked for recipes of these dishes so often, I bought a half dozen of the paperback version of this book to distribute to my children and friends. I am invited out to dinner now by friends who have prepared one of these classic dishes (Chicken al Diavolo, for example) and even forgotten where they got the book. I am saddened to see it is out of print, because I could use a few more copies for friends who can't be trusted to know how to boil pasta ascuitta but are embarking on "Mediterranean diets". Joseph Chiaravalloti



2. I regularly cook from about 10 cookbooks representing most of the great cuisines of the world, and this is my favorite book (perhaps tied with the essential The Joy of Cooking, aka Joy). Marcella's sensible if opinionated commentary provides much of the appeal, but it's the recipes that keep me coming back: they are simple, easy to follow, wholesome, and delicious. Sure, the Bolognese meat sauce takes 4 hours to make, but it's still simple. Rabbit braised in white wine, fried artichoke wedges, home-made pasta, a range of simple delicous antipasto, awesome parmesan-battered lamb chops, and several versions of scaloppini (and you can be sure she tells you how to slice it right!). Verdura (vegetables) are extensively covered with a series of improbably good, simple treatments: fennel becomes a sublime accompaniment, artichokes take center stage, green beans sparkle, and her take on potatoes is simple and great. Everything in this book is wonderful. This is her original, and it's the best.



3. There are very few times when I cook that I do not reach for this book first. Marcella has provided extremely detailed, delicious and coordinated methods to put together an extraordinary meal. The way that she lets the reader know what courses should go first or next is amazing and always on target. You WILL impress your dinner guests! This, Rao's cookbook and of course Joy of Cooking are the essentials as far as I am concerned. If you think you understand Italian cooking then test yourself with this book. I guarantee that you will learn new and insightful ways to prepare food that you never imagined. The fresh pasta section alone is worth the cost!

3 comments about Mangia! Mangia! (World Snacks).

1. My one year old son loves this board book! We actually have the entire series. It's fun and creative, and I don't have to worry about him ripping the pages. We are hooked!



2. The meter is sometimes a challenge in this book, but it's still lots of fun.



3. All of of these little board books by Amy singer are great. Perfect for the toddler who loves to turn the pages and learn about something a little different than, ball, duck, and dog!

5 comments about 1,000 Italian Recipes.

1. Many hard to find Italian recipes along with ones that are Americanized but still great eating.I love cookbooks and own over 200, I go back to this one often.



2. Despite the badly designed paper-over-board cover that resembles a made-for-the-bargain-table reject, this is a wonderful and amazing cookbook!!! Filled with simple, yet delicious recipes, this is a must have for anyone who wants to cook great Italian food at home. If I could have only two cookbooks (or had to recommend only two to the starting at-home chef), it would be this one and Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything. Though I haven't made all 1000 recipes in Scicolone's classic, so far everything I have made has been great - which means I've got a lot of good eating ahead of me. Buy it now. (PS. Wiley you might want to update this with a better cover.)



3. I have collected more cook book , and have never had so much pleasure cooking the recipes for this great Italin cook book. All the recipes come from all over Italy and the result is that you learn about the country and it produce. Fresh natural foods that grow in that region, naturally. I like to cook simply with fresh foods,useing as many vegetables as I can find, a different recipe for. THIS IS IT. THIS IS ALL YOU NEED I am thinking of selling all the other books have have searched through for all the good and different recipes , I only found in this ONE BOOK



4. This cookbook is awesome you like Italian. The recipes are fantastic and cost of the book hear compared to cable shows that also sell it but here it is a lot cheaper.



5. I highly recommend this book. It's a must have for anyone who is serious about Italian cooking. The recipes are simple, easy to follow using commonly found ingredients. Enjoy!

5 comments about The Wise Guy Cookbook: My Favorite Recipes From My Life as a Goodfella to Cooking on the Run.

1. A colorfull presentation of some excellent recipes, I truely value this book, in my collection. Try his shrimp receipe for the grill, excellent, my guests loved it and I the simplicity.



2. Hill's book is extremely insightful. It's very descriptive and chocked full of authentic Italian recipes and stories from Hill's gangster life. The recipes range from very simple to somewhat complicated, depending on the reader's preference. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to learn about the real-life, but old style of Italian cuisine.



3. I've made a few of the meals in here, and they were very good. Not all that different from the way I cook anyway, but a few differences made the meals better. No problem with the recipes.
   
   My problem is with the marketing of gangster life. This isn't a merely an Italian cookbook-- this is promoted as a MAFIA cookbook ("cooking on the run"?). His life stories are told in euphamistic and humourous fashion, but the reality is very different. The end of the book is almost enraging-- Henry says he he sees pierced and tattoo'd kids eating dinner at McDonald's, and wonders where their parent are-- they ought to be having a nice family dinner at home.
   
   PUHLEEEEZE!!! Read his childrens' book-- "On the Run--A Mafia Childhood". Years of drinking and drug related abuse, not coming home for days at a time, turning his home into a drug and sex den, both before and after his bust-- and much worse stuff-- if you find yourself getting amused by his engagingly told tales of gangster glory or if you find his stories of his Broolyn childhood endearing, then you need to read his childrens' book for balance. See the link below.
   
   Buy this book used. I wouldn't put a dime in Hill's pocket.
   
   
   On the Run: A Mafia Childhood



4. This had some great old school recipes. However, if you are an Italian American you do not need this book. Had stuff my Great Grandmother and Grandmother have passed down.



5. It was as addvertised, well written and interesting, there are many good recipes in the book, well worth the money

5 comments about La Cucina Di Lidia: Recipes and Memories from Italy's Adriatic Coast.

1. This first book by Lidia Bastianich is both cookbook of recipes from the Istrian peninsula and Felidia Ristorante in Manhatten and a memoir of Lidia's life and family in central Europe and in the United States. The recipes occupy by far the larger portion of the book and include all of the expected elements of Italian cuisine. The culinary chapters are:

   Appetizers and Soups
   Salads and Vegetables
   Pastas and Sauces
   Fish
   Meats
   Game
   Breads and Desserts
   Spirits and Infusions

   The most valuable portions of the book deal with the recipes native to Istria, especially those dealing with game and foraged vegetables and mushrooms. As the book makes clear, Istria, located near the top of the Adriatic Sea, is very near the crossroads of Europe's Roman, Slavic, and Germanic ethnic influences. The cuisine is all the more interesting for that fact. There are distinctly Austrian influences throughout the cuisine, including a recipe for an obscure Hungarian sweet crepe, palacinka, my Grandmother from Austria-Hungary would often make. The most vivid picture I get from the book is how food must have acquired the importance it has for many Europeans, since they spent so much of their time acquiring food and working with such inventive ways of making everything edible into something delicious.

   The chapters on game cookery are expecially useful, including recipes for quail, Guinea hen, pheasant, squab, duck (with sauerkraut, of course), rabbit, venison, and wild boar. Of special interest is the technique, `Squazet' which is an untranslatable word meaning a braising method used in Istria, suitable primarily to slow cooked meats. A good example of making the most of what you had.

   All the recipes are good as well as interesting for being examples of Istrian cuisine. However, I would recommend that for breads and pasteries, one consult a specialist in these fields. These baking recipes will work, but I know there are better techniques to be had. The sections on fresh pasta are short, but they appear to give competant results. The sections on various types of gnocchi and it's techniques are very good. I believe the recipes for mushrooms have much to offer which you may not find elsewhere.

   The treatment of photographs in this book leaves something to be desired. All are presented in an old fashioned sepia tint and some, even some photographed specifically for the book by modern equipment seem to loose detail to shadows and haziness. Placing captions for chapter heading photographs strikes at the rear of the book in an appendix strikes me as a case of really poor judgement. I have a hunch the captions were forgotten until it was too late to include them on the same page as the photo. There are some lapses in copy editing. The Italian culinary term `sugo' is used in the memoir and no explanation is given for the term. It does not even appear in the appendix and is arcane enough to be absent from Larousse Gastronomique and a reference on Italian cuisine. I would have been baffled by the reference had I not encountered in the book `Cooking by Hand' by Paul Bertolli.

   I give this book the highest rating because it's shortcomings do not detract from it's primary mission of being an engaging and accessible presentation of Istrian cuisine.




2. This is really two books, largely interleaved with each other. The cookbook is the more obvious one. It's where Lidia - never truly separable from her husband Felice - exposes the secrets of her kitchen. Correction: kitchens, plural. These are the recipes that have kept the lines long outside of her restaurants back to the early 1970s. Struggling against American palates trained on TV dinners, they addressed and quite possibly created a clientele who discovered that there was more to Italian food than tomato sauce.
   
   Lidia has extensive professional education, undertaken while she was a young mother and beginning restauranteur (this is the weaker sex?!?). She and her husband traveled most of Europe, studying the national and even regional specialties of each culinary tradition. Although training and research inform this book, that's not where it really comes from. It comes, through her personal alchemy, from her grandmother's truck garden. That's where the second book within this one binding comes in. That book is Lidia's culinary biography, from her earliest girlhood in Adriatic Italy up to the book's 1990 writing.
   
   The family wasn't rich. Meat was a rarity, and every part of the animal went into the pot: heart, kidney, liver, blood for black sausage, and (in this pre-BSE book) brain. Produce was fresh from the garden, though, and slaughtering the animal was part of cooking with meat. Plain cooking can be exquisite cooking, however. Lidia's close contact with every aspect of the food gave her a bone-deep appreciation for unique character of ever plant and animalin her kitchen. Her secret is really no secret at all: it lies in using the finest and freshest ingredients, and in knowing the preparation that lets each be the best it can.
   
   //wiredweird



3. I think Lidia has opened her heart and shared memories along with excellent recipes. I love this book and it is one I have out on my coffee table to just pick up and read when I have a few minutes. Her recipes are always so easy to understand and make - this cookbook is my favorite and she is an American treasure! I remember my grandmother making so many of Lidia's dishes, but she was unable to read and write and her recipes went with her when she died. Lidia has some of them in her cookbook and I thank her for that!
   This book also makes a wonderful gift to someone who is Italian or just loves Italian food! Thank you Lidia!



4. All her cookbooks are great. They are filled with recipes that I must try and once I try them they become an instant favorite and then I start getting requests for them. You find yourself always cooking Italian, which is unsettling to my Scottish relatives. I've had to hide the fact I watch "The Sopranos" to keep the speculation to a minimum.



5. I have ONE cookbook series in my kitchen. Its Lidia's! Being Italian myself, I enjoy her cooking shows and find her cookbook(s) to be thorough, easy to follow and absolutely delicious! Bravo Lidia!