Savoring Italy: Recipes and Reflections on Italian Cooking (The Savoring Series)

These are great traditionaltraditional simple Italian recipes That are perfect for everyday lifeGo get it

`Savoring Italy' is a title written by Michele Scicolone and published in the Williams-Sonoma series of oversized, lavishly photographed culinary tours of important foodie centers around the world. I bought this book before I was very familiar with Ms. Scicolone's abilities and track record as an Italian recipe writer, so I tended to dismiss it as bargain table fodder. But now, in looking back at my unreviewed backlist, I find this volume is something of a buried treasure.Scicolone has most recently made a big splash in the Italian cookbook world with her 1000 Italian Recipes book, another highly formulaic volume that I still found very worthy alongside the heavyweights of Italian cookbook writing such as Bastianich, Hazan, and Bugialli. I did compare some recipes in this volume to Mario Batali's latest, `Molto Italy' and found the newly crowned (2005 James Beard Awards) best chef in the country to have the advantage on Ms. Scicolone's 1000 recipes in interest and in quality of procedure.I have done a similar comparison of our volume `Savoring Italy' to the encyclopedic `1000 Italian Recipes' and find a similar result. For starters, I looked for six different recipes from `Savoring Italy' in the larger book and found only two with exactly the same Italian name. Two of the six had similar recipes in the two books. Two of the recipes in `Savoring Italy' had no close counterparts in `1000 Italian Recipes'.What is more interesting is that where the recipes had the same or a similar name, the ingredients and procedure in `Savoring Italy' were always more elaborate than the corresponding recipe in `1000 Italian Recipes'. For example, `1000 Italian Recipes' has a recipe for stuffed beef rolls in tomato sauce (`Braciole al Pomodoro') with eight ingredients while `Savoring Italy' has a similar English named dish (`Braciole di Manzo') which has twelve ingredients, adding prosciutto, pine nuts, raisins, and parsley, and substituting Provolone cheese for Pecorino Romano. I see similarly more elaborate treatments for all the recipes I check, including such classics as Caponata. Oddly, while `1000 Italian Recipes' salts the eggplant in its caponata recipe, `Savoring Italy' does not. Like Joel Robuchon (actually, because of Joel Robuchon's statements), I prefer avoiding the eggplant salting and prefer to look for younger fruits to avoid the bitterness of older produce.I take issue with the reviewer who says these are simple recipes. Compared even to Scicolone's major reference book, they are more complicated.So, on the recipe front, the big picture book is a totally worthy addition for anyone who happens to collect Italian cookbooks, or happens to like big, glossy culinary books in general.I am not a very good critic of photography, but my gut feeling about the pics in this book is that they are above average, but not of the very highest quality. The only real technical issue I saw was that inside shots seemed a bit grainy compared to those done in full outdoor sunlight. But, for a book retailing at a smidge below $40, they are pretty good. Their selection of subjects was equally good, in that it did not concentrate too much on the very familiar and avoided the `been there, done that' feeling. My biggest issue with the pics is that there are several on the early pages of the book which have no captions. A naïve eye could put some of the pictures anywhere from California to Greece.The book has the obligatory culinary map of Italy with provinces and major cities identified by name among all the cute little produce icons. The non-recipe text is good, but has little which is revealing to anyone who has read much of Italian cuisine, or spent more than a few months watching `Molto Mario' and `Mario Eats Italy' on the Food Network. If you want a good overview of Italian regional cuisines, see Claudia Roden's `The Food of Italy, Region by Region' or Waverly Root's `The Food of Italy'.The glossary on stock foods and wines of Italy is good, but typical of short treatments. It is good for the casual reader, but not all there for the foodie or professional. The edge this has over some other books is that it contains thumbnail instructions on how to make and or prepare things such as breadcrumbs, beans, and anchovies.This book is all about the sum of its parts. The recipes are probably more lavish than you will fine on Nonna's dinner table. These are the more celebratory versions of classic recipes, saved for special occasions or served at upscale restorantes. But this format calls for lavish dishes to match the oversize scale of the pages and the photographs.Bottom line is that this book is worth its salt. So, if you are looking for a big, expensive Italian cookbook with evocative pictures and good frills, this one will give you your money's worth.

all is good

If you love to read cookbooks, check this series out! These books take you on a journey of the history, culture and food of a region and the recipes enhance the trip. We own several in the series and they have inspired many wonderful dinner parties.

Love this book and the packaging and condition was amazing.

I love all the books in this series. The recipes, photography and information is wonderful. I am an artist and need pictures in my cookbooks to inspire me to want to try the recipe. I then might improvise or follow the recipe closely, depending on which muse overtakes my mood. These have been out for a while so it is easy to find good used copies of them.

Love !!love this series of books .some of the best recipes hands down .

We were given this as a gift and have now purchased two because people love looking through it in our kitchen. We've had some great meals with the recipes in the book and it's nicely laid out as well.