200 replies to this topic

[Craig Camp]

There are a thousands of Italian cookbooks out there. Which books have you found most useful and which books are the best at dealing with ingredients that are hard to find outside of Italy?

My current favorite is Food and Memories of Abruzzo by Anna Teresa Callen.

[Jim Dixon]

I like Gastronomy of Italy right now...Marcella's Classics, of course...and a Bugialli book on island cooking.

Jim

[Jonathan Day]

Bugialli's Foods of Sicily and Sardinia and the Smaller Islands is wonderful, especially the pictures.

Pellegrino Artusi's Art of Eating Well is also great -- I have the Kyle Phillips translation but apparently a new and more complete one has just been published. Ada Boni's Talismano della Felicita.

And Elizabeth David's Italian Food, of course.

Edited by Jonathan Day, 18 March 2003 - 04:23 PM.

[wingding]

'The Splendid Table',by Lynn Rosetto Kasper.

[Bill Klapp]

Matt Kramer's Passion for Piedmont, as much to read as for the recipes; anything by Biba Caggiano; Marcella for sure; Fred Plotkin's Recipes from Paradise (Ligurian)

[Kim WB]

My limitation as a home cook is that I am too dependent on recipes, and am hesitant to adapt or change things too much..so Nancy Verde Barr's book, Make it Italian, is a great choice for me..she provides a recipe, then suggests variationson each dish. It has encouraged me to experiment . I also enjoy Lidia's Italian Table, for its great shellfish recipes and easy antipasti's.

[torakris]

My favorite Italian book that I own is Antipasti by Julia Della Croce. I have made some wonderful things from this book. I also am currently enjoying Biba Caggiano's Biba's taste of Italy.
I also have books by Kasper and Hazan but find Hazan's stuff on the bland side and Kasper's stuff too complicated and with a lot of ingredients I can't find,

[halland]

Classical and Contemporary Italian Cooking for Professionals by Bruno Ellmer is a good resource to have at hand. A lot of the dishes are complex and outside the scope of what one might normally prepare, but there are a few simple gems as well.

hal

[Jim Dixon]

Bugialli's Foods of Sicily and Sardinia and the Smaller Islands is wonderful, especially the pictures.

This is the same one I have...couldn't remember the name. Another newer book with simple recipes and wonderful stories is Anna Tosca Lanza's most recent book on Sicilian cooking.

Jim

[Steve Plotnicki]

The Splendid Table is terrific. But an excellent book that is overlooked is Tuscan Women. Forgot who wrote it. But some great recipes in there.

[Toby]

From the Tables of Tuscan Women -- Anne Bianchi.

I also like Carol Field's In Nonna's Kitchen and also her Celebrations of Italy.

[Steve Plotnicki]

That's the one. Great book. I don't like the Carol Field books as much as other people do.

[Toby]

You sometimes have to fiddle with Carol Field's recipes, but then they taste really good.

Another one of Anne Bianchi's books that I like is Italian Festival Food.

[indiagirl]

I like The Villa Table and Lorenza's Pasta by Lorenza de Medici.

[Suzanne F]

Italian Regional Cooking by Ada Boni. That's the one I go to first for just about everything. After that, Marcella Hazan.

[Claude Kolm/The Fine Wine Review]

I've liked the Rogers and Gray River Cafe Cookbook in addition to many of the others mentioned above.

[Alex F]

Craig

My favourite Italian cookbooks that I couldn’t be without are:-

The Food of Italy – Claudia Roden

Sicilian Home Cooking – Wanda and Giovanna Tornabene

Cucina Siciliana – Clarissa Hyman

And all three of Mario Batali’s books

Plus of course Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s book, which is almost a travel guide for me!

[Adam Balic]

I like Anna del Conte's "The Classic Food of Northern Italy". Interesting recipes, interesting stories.

[awbrig]

Right now I am enjoying cooking from Rao's Cookbook...pretty basic Italian-American cuisine - but the results are great...

[mamster]

Cucina Simpatica.

[beewilson]

Claudia Roden - The Food of Italy: very good on the different regions of Italy, with fascinating little essays on each area of the country, and the recipes are simple without being bland. If you only know her from her Middle Eastern books, I highly recommend it.

Oh, and there's meant to be a new book on regional Italian cooking published by the Slow Food Movement coming out later this year.

[Alberts]

I haven't worked up to the classics yet. But a great overall review for the basic Italian cook is Regional Italian Cuisine (Barron's). Their versions of the standards, i.e. Ribollita, Melanzane parmigiana, etc., are excellent.

[mikeycook]

I am an avid home cook who would like to cook Italian more often. One of the reasons I haven't is that I have a lack of quality Italian cookbooks. I have looked at a lot of them in new and used bookstores but have a hard time telling a particularly good or important book from an average or poor one (without buying it and trying out recipes). With French food, I took the approach of learning the canon of important chefs (Escoffier, F. Point, Bocuse, etc.) and styles, as well as the different regional cuisines, and used this as a basis to select books. With Italian, I can certainly learn the different culinary regions, but have had a harder time understanding the canon of important chefs (i.e. who learned from whom, etc.)

I would like to ask the eGullet community for a recommendation of Italian cookbooks that are must-haves. Here are the conditions:

1. Books by Italian chefs who have influenced a number of other Italian chefs (and hopefully still influence them today).
2. Good regional cookbooks, particularly those with details on the ingredients and customs of a given area (Paula Wolfert's Cooking of South-West France is a good example of the type of regional cookbook I like.)
3. No contemporary restaurant cookbooks, particularly if they are from Italian-American restaurants (I have the Rao's cookbook and have looked at the Babbo and, while they have their strong points, this is not the type of thing I am looking for.)

Any details you can provide on why these books are important (i.e. who the author is, how they have influenced Italian cooking, etc.) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for the assistance.

[Adam Balic]

For regional Italian cooking I would recommend two of Anna del Conte's books:

The Classic Food of Northern Italy

Gourmet Italy


Similar type of anthoplogical style to Paula Wolfert, plus the recipes are very authentic and good as well.

Edited by Jason Perlow, 13 August 2003 - 10:25 PM.

[badthings]

The Food of Italy by Waverly Root is an old but very useful survey of Italian regional cooking, but it is not a cookbook.

Fred Plotkin's La Terra Fortunata is highly regarded, and seems very authentic for Friuli-Venezia Giulia. He has another book on Liguria. I really like Marcella Hazan for Reggio-Emilia, but i am no judge of its authenticity. This book is particularly useful, because it's from the sixties, so she really makes an effort to explain the basic concepts.

Edited by Jason Perlow, 13 August 2003 - 10:16 PM.

[malcolmjolley]

Marcella is fantastic.

[mikeycook]

I can already feel my collection expanding.

[Basilgirl]

Lynn Rosetto Kasper's The Italian Country Table and The Splendid Table (Emilia-Romagna)

Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Italian Cooking

[Bill Klapp]

Any of Marcella's books, for sure. I will step up and confirm her "authenticity". In addition to the Plotkin tome on Friuli, Recipes from Paradise, his Ligurian cookbook, is probably the best that ever WILL be written. Liguria was (is?) Plotkin's home turf in Italia, and, among other things, he gives you about 50 uniquely different recipes for pesto. I am also a big fan of Biba Caggiano's Biba's Taste of Italy for Emilia-Romagna. I can't speak to authenticity there, but I can tell you that her recipes deliver results that you cannot find in many restaurants in the U.S. Lastly, I have a real soft spot for Matt Kramer's Passion for Piedmont. It is out of print now, but it is around and you should be able to find a copy. Some of his recipes have been adapted for American ingredients, but most work marvelously. I would tackle all of the above before considering anything from regions further south in Italy. Craig, is there a Lombardia cookbook on a quality level with the above? There are certainly some fine dishes to be considered. (I think Biba cops a classic risotto Milanese recipe, but you should also direct mikeycook to your own excellent mini-treatise on risotto.)

[slkinsey]

I am rather of the opinion that Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking is the one essential book no kitchen should be without. After that, it varies depending on taste and the regional cooking that interests you. As far as I know, there is no book that goes through all the regions comprehensively explaining why the cooking has evolved the way it has (what the agriculture and resources are like, levels of affluence, etc.) and giving representative examples of the most classic recipes from each region. The few books that I have seen which do claim to make such a comprehensive survey still focus the vast majority of their material on the few best-known regions at the expense of others. I have spent a lot of time in Le Marche, so it is always a dead give-away when a cookbook lumps Le Marche together with Umbria and Toscana or Abruzzi. If anyone is aware of a book (in English or translated into English) that actually does a good job of this, I would be interested to know about it.