Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef - Massimo Bottura

[ChrisTaylor]

So, this just landed on my doorstep. First impressions:

• As is the norm for Phaidon, the book has an exceptional level of presentation. The cover is solid. The photographs are very nice. My only 'issue' is that the recipes are all crammed, in fine print, at the very back, separated from the associated story and photographs. The page(s) with the story don't include a page reference for the recipe. Basically, an even more unfriendly layout than NOMA if you actually want to cook something from the book.
• Some of the recipes are, for the home cook, near-impossible purely in terms of the equipment Bottura calls for. That's nothing new for this kind of book. That being said, I'd argue the recipes are, on the whole, more approachable than those in The Fat Duck Cookbook if only on the basis they're comprised of fewer elements.
• Some of the recipes are, for the serious home cook, approachable. The ragu recipe is less insane than what some of the reviews make out. Assuming you live near the kind of butcher that stocks/will order in small quantities of things like veal tail and tongue. I mean, if you scale up the recipe and freeze it in batches, the ragu is doable for anyone that owns an immersion circulator and has the time to do all of the shopping. The home cook might skip his recipe for tagliatelle, though. Incidentally, the story attached to the recipe states that the meats are all bagged separately. The actual recipe sees them mixed together in one bag. I don't know if the 'simplified' version of the dish is a more recent/superior take on the dish. I doubt it's an effort to make the dish easier as, really, putting everything in one bag rather than splitting things between several smaller bags seems like an odd concession to make. Part of the egg content is made up with the 'liquid' from balut. He states that this gives the pasta added bite. I haven't heard of anyone using balut ... liquid in pasta before. It's an interesting idea.
• Ingredients aren't a 'problem' as much as I expected them to be. Sure, some recipes call for one or two expensive ingredients or things that might be hard to find outside a particular region of Italy, but there are plenty of recipes that involve things I can get locally half way round the world without even having to go on an epic shopping trip or turn to online purveyors.

Obviously, this is not a book for everyone. It's not trying to occupy the same shelf space as the likes of Hazan's work or even cheffy takes on the same such as Giorgio Locatelli's Made in Italy (my go-to Italian book). It's very much in the territory of the books turned up by Alinea and Noma, albeit with one foot rooted firmly in tradition (some of the dishes, like the ragu, are Bottura's straightforward attempt at a 'perfect' version of a classic). Anyone got this book yet? Anyone cooked from it yet?

[weinoo]

It's on my list. But these are books that I just like for reading and looking at the pix, more than cooking from them.  I haven't made a single recipe from NOMA, but I enjoy owning it!