The Italian Gourmet: Authentic Ingredients and Traditional Recipes from the Kitchens of Italy

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, Informative Book with Wonderful Recipes
Review: This is a fantastic and beautiful book. In it, you will learn how to make your own noodles. You will learn more about olives than you've ever dreamed possible; maybe you'll try some antipasti (appetizers); and you will definitely learn some Italian! I love the vegetables chapter, where you learn how to cook asparagus (which had been a mystery before this book) and learn about the importance of leaching the poisons out of eggplant before you cook it, easily done with salt; and you learn that the bell pepper can be a tasty vegetable in its own right, and not just a seasoning vegetable in the same class as the onion: the Stewed Bell Peppers, called Peperonati, is an easy yet superb dish. Being a big fan of rice, I loved learning about the different rices, and realized that our long-grain rice is not that common in other parts of the world! And cooking it by sauteeing it first is a European method I first learned about in one of Brazilian writer Jorge Amado's novels. I could go on and on about this book, but really you need to find this book, either in hardcover or paperback, and see for yourself what a wonderful job they did putting this book together! What a shame it's no longer in print, because I treasure my copy!