Regional Foods of Northern Italy: Recipes and Remembrances

By Marlena de Blasi

Book Overview

This is a cookbook like no other. It evokes the essence of Northern Italy's traditional foods in a beautifully wrought amalgam of recipe and narrative. It beckons you across the wet stone of Venice's Rialto bridge into a candlelit fifteenth-century cantina. It invites you down a forest road in Umbria, where grappa-fortified fishermen toss trout onto a wood fire and stage a sunset feast. It proffers nearly two hundred recipes from the heart and soul of Italy's North, including: Risotto allo Zafferano Milanese Arista! Arista! Pasta delle Sfogliatrici Pesce in Saor La Salsiccia alla Moda di Lucrezia Borgia Fegato alla Veneziana Carbonada d'Enfer Arvier Pesto di Mandorle e Noci Ferraresi Pollo alla Marengo Cialzons della Famiglia de Galateo Pagnotta di Patate Pasta e Fagioli Sogliole in Gratella Caffe alla Valdostana Tiramisu This remarkable world within a book reflects the honest, authentic tastes of a people for whom food is a cardinal passion. With it in hand, you will perfume your home with the ancient and divine scents of glorious food, calling forth the ineffable essence of this land and its bounty. Let the adventure begin. About the Author Marlena de Blasiis an American living in Venice with her husband, Fernando. She has traveled extensively in her adopted country, stopping to savor each region's abundance. A food and wine journalist and culinary historian, her articles on food and travel have appeared inThe International Herald Tribune, The St. Louis Riverfront Times, andSacramentomagazine. She is presently writing this volume's sequel,Regional Foods of Southern Italy.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0761509054
• ISBN13: 9780761509059
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Prima Lifestyles
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Regional Foods of Southern Italy

Excellent service, prompt delivery, excellent conditon as described, packaged well. Would use again.

MUCH, MUCH MORE THAN AN ITALIAN COOKBOOK!

What a wonderful book! The stories associated with the recipes are just amazing. Especially the story of Elisabetta, the seventy year old restaurateur--who began her career at the age of sixty-one--that told the author she has just come into her stride. The Polenta with Braised Pork and Roasted Red Peppers recipe that was included with this story was great. If you have an opportunity to purchase this book, and you have the time and patience to allow some of these recipes to develop you and whoever you serve will be richly rewarded. There are recipes of seafood, pasta, pork and lamb. Some of the recipes are quick and simple, with simple ingredients. Some of the recipes require more ingredients, as well as time. However, my book is marked with post-it-notes on many recipes that I cannot wait to present to my family.

Connecting with the spirit of Southern Italian cooking

This is an extraordinary book. I have never had a "cookbook" like this one and have come to treasure Marlena De Blasi's work. Like the other reviewers, I would agree that this is not a simple, "learn the basics of Italian cooking" cookbook. It is, however, well worth the time spent learning about these recipes and their cultural context. Ms De Blasi succeeds in connecting the reader with the spirit, with the essence, with the history and the context of cooking in Southern Italy. Each recipe, or group of recipes, is preceeded by wonderful descriptions of where, when and how the dish was made over the centuries. It give the reader a feel for the people who developed these recipes over time, and the forces that led them to create. I have read the cookbook cover to cover and found it delightful. Surprisingly open but a great pleasure as you get to know Marlena and her husband. I have also cooked about 2 dozen of the recipes. Some are somewhat complicated but nearly all turned out wonderfully. Some of the greatest successes are the seafood (particularly mussels done several different ways and a roasted rockfish/sea bass) and the many (often simple) pastas. Regional Foods of Southern Italy is a rare, and invaluable, find.

Best meals I've ever had

This book certainly has more prose than necessary, but the recipes are the important part - and these recipes are great. If you are looking for simple, rustic, italian recipes, there are plenty of other books to chose from. This author, however, provides the best collection of recipes that goes beyond the basics, providing the reader with meals you won't see anywhere. The recipe for chestnut flour-ricotta gnocchi are a good example.

DESERVES TO BE IN THE KITCHEN OF EVERY SERIOUS COOK

As 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.