Great Food and a Voluptuous Read
I found this cookbook to incorporate two things I love: wonderful food and a good read. If you like travel, history, folklore, and authentic regional Italian food, Marlena de Blasi's first Italian cookbook is it. I know little about the cuisine of northern Italy, but found this cookbook to provide excellent recipes, written in a sensuous, personal style that kept me reading on.
The ingredients called for are, for the most part, available to the home cook. If not, there is a mail-order resource section at the back of the book. Or one may substitute without fear of spoiling the dish: for the 5-day beef marinated in Amarone, I substituted another wine (a dry homebrewed raisin wine) and the result was delicious. One thing I disagree with the author about is the overly-generous use of rosemary in cooking; it is an herb to be used sparingly lest it overpower the other flavors of a dish.
The recipes are laid out by region, with an introduction incorporating travel notes and personal memories before each section - great reading for the armchair traveler. There is a good balance of meat-based and vegetable-based recipes, with excellent recipes for the pasta and risotto dishes one expects from a book of Italian cookery.
I miss the recipe grouping found in traditional cookbooks like "The Joy of Cooking", which is convenient, but you can always look up ingredients and recipes in the index.
There is a list of regional Italian wines, with notes on how to educate one's palate. Very interesting also is the list, by region, of the author's favorite northern Italian eateries.
The glossary is useful, and includes the definition of the expression "gilding," which seems to be the author's idiosyncratic way of saying "browning meat" or "carmelizing onions".
Another oft-repeated expresssion is the "innocence" of a dish, to the point where I would like to say, "Yes, I get it, pure flavors." Still, the style is warm, personal, and ever intelligently sensuous. I love cooking out of the book, and enjoy just reading it for relaxation.
