The Gastronomy Of Italy

Rating:
Summary: Bella!!!
Review: Being a huge fan of Italian cooking (and quite a good novice in my own right) I was very eager to find a good cookbook on the subject especially after returning from a month long culinary tour of the pennisula in November. Well, I hit the jackpot when a friend presented me with a copy of Gastronomy of Italy. It is a simple, beautifully written and presented book on the foods of Italy. Anybody who is looking for a really good book on Italian cooking need look no further than this. I spent over 3 hours on the first evening just savoring the recipes and drooling over the photographs!! Bella! Enjoy. Scott

Rating:
Summary: Sets a new standard for Cookery books
Review: This is a heavy book in weight and price, but definitely not in content. Written in an easy-flowing style, the recipes are clear, concise and uncluttered - the Author obviously loves the food and the country - it includes a potted history of cooking in the Italian peninsula, detailing the influences from France, Arabia, Germany and the New World. There are numerous references to the formative cookery writers of the past, many of whose recipes remain unchanged to this day!

This is the only book I've seen with such a comprehensive list of ingredients (apart from specialist ingredients books) - almost everything available is described in detail. This list takes up nearly half the book, but is an integral part of it, as it gives one a deeper insight to each ingredient and hence the importance of its use in the recipes.

The recipes themselves range from the classic & regional to the obscure & parochial and many are accompanied by delicious photographs that just beg you to try out the recipes.

This is the way cookery books should be ... gets my five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Poor ktichen testing but nice book
Review: This is yet another Italian cookbook suffering from poor proofreading and kitchen testing (judging from the severe errors in the one recipe I've tried so far, the Polenta with meat sauce). I don't see how they could invest so much money in beautiful photography and printing and yet completely drop the ball in what matters most, making it easy and pleasant to generate the meals.

Of course, that doesn't matter most in selling the book off the shelf, so publishers are getting away with it. But I will gripe here when I have a chance and punish them for their oversight. (The thing could have been done in half the time, with a third the salt, and anyone trying it would realize this immediately once it was too late...) I also want preparation times in my recipes and make-ahead and storage/leftover notes.

Otherwise this book is beautiful and has one tempting page after another with plenty of useful Italian translations and an encyclopedia of ingredients and wine all of which sold me the book and I am generally happy enough with it. But I will defensively make the recipes from now on, now that my trust has been violated.