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Italian Cookbooks – The Best Of


Craig Camp

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Claudia Roden - The Food of Italy (region by region). This is relatively basic but gives a good overview to each region, detailing its history, culinary roots and traditional regional dishes. Also included is brief details on each regions grapes and wines.

Taste is everything

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Hi Geoff,

If you are looking for a practical easy-to-carry illustrated guide on regional Italian food and drink (features on general food topics, wines, cheeses, salumi, artisan products from pane toscano to culatello di Zibbibo, addresses for producers, food shops, limited number of restaurant recommendations) then you could try Frommers Food Lovers Companion Italy. I've just checked with Amazon, and though it is no longer in print, there are three used copies available. If you can't source, come back to me and I may be able to help. I'm the author together with my wife who is the photographer.

MP

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for tuscany, well, there are more books on tuscan cuisine and wine than just about anyplace else in the world. carla capalba also has a fine guide: something like "food lover's guide to tuscany." if it's emilia-romagna, then you're looking for "the splendid table."

there are a couple of other books that anyone who has even a passing interest in food ought to pick up before they go to italy: fred plotkins "italy for hte gourmet traveler" and faith willinger's "eating in italy." i always xerox the applicable chapters before i go and keep them with me for ready reference.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Craig: I, too, love Food and Memories of Abruzzo. I've never met anyone else with similar feelings, but I love her personal insights into food, living, family and, of course, recipes.

And to Bill: As I've said, I'm wiht you all the way on Kramer's book. And thank you for pointing out that I'm looking at Neive on the cover.

We leave May 22; first stop Alba area (Tre Stelle). Four nights, what do you think (I mean, they're your suggestions, afterall): Antine, Rondo, Crota and either Il Centro or Enoteca? We're looking for moderate, low-key, unpretentious, and food, food, food. (Oh, and much wine).

Cheers

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My favorite Italian cookbooks for actual cooking are Hazan's "Classic Italian Cooking" and Carlo Middione's "Southern Italian Cooking." I use them very often, and I think they capture the simple Italian cooking I love. I've tried almost everything in both of them. I have several other of Marcella's books, but this one is the only one you need.

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  • 7 months later...

Am I joking? Why am I, an Italian and Italy FH, asking for a tip regarding Italian cookbooks?

Very simple: I have a nice collection of Italian recipe collection, general gastronomy and wine books, but all published and written by Italians. And mainly available in Italian only. I think the time has come for me to check a few books written in English on Italian cuisine, after all quite a few of these get quoted here on eGullet from time to time, so it would certainly help me to know what you people are talking about all the time :biggrin: .

Also, I'm curious to see how much they remain true to Italian traditions and how good the recipes are. In this last respect Italian (i.e. from Italy) books are quite bad: book budgets for recipe collections are usually pretty low and very often there's little or no recipe testing.

So fire away: which books do you think represent the best ones on Italian cooking on the English speaking market?

Thanks.

Il Forno: eating, drinking, baking... mostly side effect free. Italian food from an Italian kitchen.
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Alberto - although I have a few Italian cooking books, the book I use most often is 'The Classic Food of Northern Italy by Anna Del Conte'. It is written for cooks in the UK (I bought it in Australia originally and it was fine to use there as well). I like the balance of information and selected recipes, rather then just being a large collection of recipes. This goes some way to giving you a feel for the type of food you are trying to make.

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Oh, and another nice coffe table type book -- lots of appealing photos -- is the Saveur Cooking Italian

Oh, J[esus]. You may be omnipotent, but you are SO naive!

- From the South Park Mexican Starring Frog from South Sri Lanka episode

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I'm very partial to Marcella Hazan, too. :biggrin: And while I haven't cooked anything from it, I very much enjoy reading Paul Bertolli's cooking by Hand. However, I have to admit that my all-time favorite is Italian Regional Cooking by Ada Boni -- but then it's translated from Italian. :rolleyes:

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The Italian Baker by Carol Field is a great source of traditional foods.

Ooops, I was wrong, I do have a book on Italian cooking in English, exactly the one you suggest.

Field's Italian Baker is, at the amateur level, without any doubt the best recipe book on Italian bread available, in both English and Italian. I found some recipes needed a little tweaking and it has a marked Northern Italy bias, but apart from that it's a great book, one I regularly go back to.

Suzanne: Bertolli's book sounds very intriguing. I've read a few reviews and read a couple of his recipes: it certainly is well written and true to the Italian cooking spirit. Probably I should get a copy to see if the whole book is as nice as the few pages I went through... there comes another Amazon wish-list item :rolleyes:.

Boni's book is good but I find it misses some representative recipes for almost all regional cuisines, though I guess it's just inevitable with such a huge range of dishes to choose from.

What annoys me more is that a few recipes, the more rustic ones in particular, are cleaned up and made more acceptable for the less adventurous eaters, loosing much of their character. Boni always gives the impression she's a bit ashamed when it comes to certain simple recipes, both in the regional and the Talismano book, as if these dishes were not fit for the table of a properly behaved middle class family. Still her books are an important reference book and very useful ones too.

Il Forno: eating, drinking, baking... mostly side effect free. Italian food from an Italian kitchen.
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I have a huge number of cookbooks, including a great many on Italian, Italian-American, regional and etc., but my hands down favorites are Claudia Roden's book, although I can't recall the title offhand, it is Foods of Italy or Regional Foods of Italy.

And also Ciao Italia, by Mary Ann Esposito who used to have a show on PBS and I believe also on food TV.

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

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Claudia Roden's book is Food of Italy, Region by Region.

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

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Does anyone care for Lidia Matticchio Bastianich's books?  I'm drawn to her simplicity in prep, passion for food, and well frankly, the hair's a little Trumpnotic.

I've got La Cucina di Lidia, sharing recipes from wher she grew up in Istria. Lots of very different recipes in there. She's definitely in my Pantheon, that's for sure.

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Add another vote in the Marcella Hazan column. Mario Batali's Simple Italian food is still my favorite of his.

I'm also partial to the Regional Foods of Northern Italy and Regional Foods of Southern Italy by Marlena di Blasi. Her prose gets a bit out of hand at times (her next book after these was a semi-autobiographical romance novel!) but she has alot of unique dishes in there.

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Does anyone care for Lidia Matticchio Bastianich's books?  I'm drawn to her simplicity in prep, passion for food, and well frankly, the hair's a little Trumpnotic.

I've got La Cucina di Lidia, sharing recipes from wher she grew up in Istria. Lots of very different recipes in there. She's definitely in my Pantheon, that's for sure.

I have all three of her books and am anxiously awaiting her next one, due out in November I think. My favorite is Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen, which while not authentically Italian has some fantastic recipes.

Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking is...essential.

I love cooking with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

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Another vote for Marcella's Essentials.

Lynee Rossetto Kasper's The Splendid Table concentrates on the cuisine of Emilia-Ramagna. It's full of information about the region and her text is fascinating.

"Some people see a sheet of seaweed and want to be wrapped in it. I want to see it around a piece of fish."-- William Grimes

"People are bastard-coated bastards, with bastard filling." - Dr. Cox on Scrubs

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