|
Regional Foods of Northern Italy: Recipes and Remembrances |
|
|
Regional Foods of Northern Italy: Recipes and Remembrances |
| Browse by Category: Arts & Photography Biographies & Memoirs Business & Investing Children's Books Comics & Graphic Novels Computers & Internet Cooking, Food & Wine Entertainment Gay & Lesbian Health, Mind & Body History Home & Garden Law Literature & Fiction Medicine Mystery & Thrillers Nonfiction Outdoors & Nature Parenting & Families Professional & Technical Reference Religion & Spirituality Romance Science Science Fiction & Fantasy Sports Teens Travel |
by: Marlena de Blasi
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5945 EAN: 9780761509059 Edition: illustrated edition Format: Illustrated ISBN: 0761509054 Label: Prima Lifestyles Languages: Manufacturer: Prima Lifestyles Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 384 Publication Date: September 24, 1997 Publisher: Prima Lifestyles Release Date: September 24, 1997 Studio: Prima Lifestyles Editorial Review: Product Description: This charming classic has fast distinguished itself among books on Italian cooking, the most popular cookbook category. This unique, imaginative feast of culinary inspiration is part travelogue, part character sketch, part recipe collection, and 100 percent Italian--but written with American grocery stores and kitchens in mind! Amazon.com 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! Related Items:
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - BEAUTY! LOVE! george's creed in a nutshellYou have been told you need the other "classic" Italian cookbooks like Marcella Hazan. You dabble in others like Lydia Bastianich. You collect cookbooks on certain favored regions like Rome. But really, there is nothing like this book by Marlena de Blasi, and her companion book on the foods of Southern Italy. There is an incredible beauty to the recipes, the selections, and the way in which the author weaves the food into narratives and stories about travel through Italy. Her recipes for many, many braised meat dishes are constants on my table. Every five to ten pages, I find a recipe that changes the way I cook and eat. I spend much time just reading the narratives, which I never do with other cookbooks. I have dog-eared and folded over the corners of pages for recipes that I hope to cook soon -- there are years of joy to be made between these cover -- recipes that I have made, recipes that I will make. Places that I will want to visit. All of that. Between these two books, I have been celebrating dinner parties with friends for years. I just adore these books, love them, and wish more and more people would realize what treasures they are. Rating:  - A good effort, but too lost in the romance of the placeI like the recipes in this book. They give a nice cross-section of Northern Italian cooking, and are picked as much for being interesting as typical. Also, the stories and remniscences are those of a first-rate memoirist. The problem is that the two of them combined together make for a somewhat overly flowery reading. I struggled with the star rating on this one -- it really is a worthwhile book to have, but it has serious flaws, the most glaring being the deliberate omissions of the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige and Liguria; the author's logic is that Trentino food is largely Austrian and that of Liguria more southern Italian in style, not helping the reader to know northern Italy, but that seems to me to be an overly romantic way of looking at it. I don't really like it when cookbook authors pare down their work for reasons of accessibility or percieved consistency, because the book loses a segment of the whole picture. It's a pity, really, because it probably is one of the better books for understanding the food of northern Italy. The flowery tone of the book that I do not particularly enjoy actually does appeal to some, and the personal stories do give a context to the book that more technical cookbooks lack. If it was a more expensive book, I probably wouldn't recommend it, but it's a little like the idea of a film reviewer saying "wait for the DVD" -- it's not that pricey, so grab a copy and see what you think. (And I do like the Modenese pancetta-and-egg scramble in the book -- very tasty.) Rating: - DESERVES TO BE IN THE KITCHEN OF EVERY SERIOUS COOKAs I write this review, the book is out-of-stock. I want to share this book with everyone, so I am hoping that my review will change things around. First of all, the recipes in this book are complex -- but -- there are books that are much more challenging. Haute Mexican and Japanese cuisine are more difficult, the first because it grew out of a class culture where the food was cooked by maids the second because it is so unlike western food. There are things in this book that are exotic, even to Bostonians where "the Italian North End" was made such an imprint on the city. There is a pasta based on yeast raised dough that is wonderful on a winter's night when snow is falling. There are superb chicken dishes and magnificent desserts. This one of only two cookbooks that I have wanted to go through, page by page, recipe by recipe, and cook everything.
Other Departments - Book Shop - Cake Decorating Shop - Magazine Shop - Candles - Licensed Characters - DVD - Video Shop - Wedding Shop |
Please send mail to PastryWiz with questions or comments about this web site.
This Store is brought to you by
BakingShop.com & PastryWiz.com
In association with Amazon.com
|
* Information in this document is subject to change without notice. Listed prices are for informational purposes only and may change without notice. Final prices are determined when you place your order. |
