Italy Books

I was in Sicily last February, a beautiful time to be there and though I saw many beautiful things, I did not see all the wonderful palaces described in this lovely book. The book is a great incentive to go again.

How great the book is.Through the book you can watch the most beautiful palaces in Sicily. The phots show the incredible buildings and sight, just like you walking among them,breathing with them. Off course the words introduce the history about each palace , just like a sweet dream, enjoy it.

By using this book modern readers can get an extraordinary view of Rome, following in the footsteps of Palladio, the Renaissance master architect, as he takes them round the churches and antiquities. Just the right size to fit in your pocket, will change the way you see the 'eternal city'.

This book serves as a wonderful guide to a neglected side of Rome. Palladio's two guidebooks to the 'City of Wonders' published in 1554 were addressed to both his fellow architects and to religious tourists. He leads the reader into the ruins through the walls and gates, moves on to the roads, bridges, sewers and aqueducts, and then to the circuses, triumphal columns, arches and, finally, the temples. By using its useful annotated maps on site, this book allows the reader to follow in the footsteps of the Renaissance tourist. A reviewer in the New York Times described it as "A fascinating snapshot of Rome a century before the Baroque architects got their hands on it."

the book came in a timely manner and is in very good condition

Really a wonderful book on the iconic Palladio and his muse Venice. It's as if, the two where made for each other, his genius seems to have found its perfect setting in this most unique city. The images are crisp and the text is fascinating. If you have any interest in Palladio or Venice, or just appreciate a great coffee table book, then I can't conceive of you being anything but pleased with this purchase. Highly recommended.

I picked up an uncorrected proof of this cookbook/travel memoir at a tag sale. I am an avid cookbook reader and thought I would check it out. I was so pleasantly surprised by Pane e Salute. The book has two narrators, a husband and wife team who own a restaurant in Vermont (which I am dying to visit!). She tells the stories of the couples' various travels through Italy in each of the four seasons in quick, beautifully detailed vignettes. He provides the recipes from their journeys.
While I truly enjoyed the memoir of the people and places that have blessed the authors' lives, as a self-proclaimed foodee, it is the recipes that make this such a great find. They are simple, flavorful, and have filled my apartment with rich aromas and full tables since I discovered the book. There is something pure about the way this food is prepared that makes you feel great eating and serving it.

New Englanders are fortunate enough to be within a reasonable driving distance to Woodstock, an idyllic Victorian town nestled in the Rutland region of eastern Vermont--perhaps one of the last places one might look for exquisite, authentic Italian cuisine served in an atmosphere that could just as easily be in Siena or Florence as Vermont. For everyone else, there is--thankfully--this book. While Heekin and Barber are not themselves Italian, their long love affair with Italy, its culture and its people have inspired them to the fine culinary heights that come from immersing oneself in the fundamental laws of simple, full-bodied living. They KNOW Italy. Heekin's exquisite, finely crafted prose introduces each section of the book, which is organized by season, and Barber's brilliant recipes (and his flair for imparting them in a way that is truly inspirational) make this lovely volume a must-have in ANY cook's kitchen, especially if you love Italy, real Italian food and what can only be called "authentic living." Live and cook by their recipes, and you'll transform your kitchen and home into a warm, cozy, sun-filled haven for you, your friends and family.

One of the features of this little book which I appreciate more than words can convey is the little glossary of dishes found at its end. Listed within 3 columns are the names,spellings and pronunciations of dishes in Italian, English and Sicilian. It is a delightful resource.

Vincent Schiavelli's recollections of his grandfather's stories are very sweet. It is far more than a "recipe book". It's an enchanting family history as well.

While stationed in the Air Force at Hempstead, Long Island, I use to visit with my aunt Anna who lives on Ellery Street, down the block from the author, and this book brought back many many EXCELLENT memories of Brooklyn. Great reading and recipts.

A wonderfully clear presentation of the methods of Sicilian cooking through presentation of many important recipes. The author's recollections of his grandfather who taught him to cook shows the warmth, humor and culture of the Sicilians. Many of the recipes familiar in my childhood are found in this book. Now my daughter is learning one important aspect her great grandmother's culture.

I look forward to the revised edition and plan to buy several copies for friends and family.

This book will bring you back to nonna's kitchen. Every recipe, so far has been excellent. With each easy to comprehend and prepare recipe, comes stories from the old country, and a few from the new. You will be very pleased with this book.

One of Ruth Sanderson's Best. A sweet retelling of the Cinderella Story with a "feline spin". Papa Gatto is the prince's advisor, and is responsible for bringing "Cinderella" (Beatrice) together with the Prince. I love the message included at the end that care should be taken in not rushing into a marriage without coming to know and love your partner first.

Wonderful story, rich and delightful illustrations. My 6 year old daughter can't get enough of this book.

As you'd expect in a book like this, it tells the tale from Columbus to Madonna, and tells it well, concisely, entertainingly, without being annoyingly fulsome or reverent. What makes this a treaure, though, are all the surprises--you turn a page and find, actually tucked into a corner or attached by glue, replicas of ancient passports, or hand-written recipes, or coupon books from some old immigrant mutual-aid insurance policy. There's even a St. Lucia prayer card from somebody's funeral and the jury's verdict form from a trial of Al Capone. It brings the history to life in a way beyond mere words. If you buy one copy, you'll end up buying more as gifts, without a doubt.It's a beautiful object and a terrific book.

Not long after my grandmother's death, I went to a Borders store and was looking through the books on sale. I saw this lovely book and picked it up to leaf through it. The first page I opened the book to was the one with the little handwritten recipe. The recipe was unfamiliar to me, but the small neat handwriting was amazingly like my grandmother's, and the slip of paper it was written on was exactly like a page from one of the little notebooks she used to write in. I didn't have to look at another thing in the book to know I had to buy it. When I got the book home and actually read it, I LOVED IT! The book itself is really good, but all of the little bits that are tucked inside really make it worth the money. It's a lovely book.

This book is one of the most sensual pieces of literature out there. I cannot think of another book that reads so much like an operatic aria. It is not so much a meditation on love as on all-consuming attraction, obsession, and eroticism. The story takes you into the mind of Giorgio, who is torn between two women who could hardly be more opposite. Clara is beautiful, healthy...and married. Fosca is sickly, desperate...and alluring. The two best things I can say about reading this book are:
1) It challenges each of us to get in touch with the light and dark sides of human sexuality.
2) The translation is absolutely outstanding. For readers who appreciate masterful translation work, or for those who study literature in translation, this is a must-read!

Fosca is a sick woman, living in XIXth Italy she is considered a Hysteric. But Fosca is not only sick she is ugly. And there is nothing worse for a woman being ugly. So one day arrives Giorgio, a handsome officer, who just left his lover, a married woman back in Milan. To Fosca is love at first sight, but for Giorgo is not. He tries to be kind because she is ill. But her desperate love is more than he can endure.

The PASSION she feels for him is agressive even in the physical sense of the word. Fosca wants him so desperately that you can do nothing but understand her and also feel what she feels. Unrequited love here is a powerful force out of control.
The darkness in his relation with Fosca has its reverse with the clarity in his relation with Clara. She is beautiful, sensual. The "usual" object for a man's affection. But through the novel this oposition is changing in a subtile way. Because finally what Fosca offers is pure love. With total surrender, yes, but giving everything in exchange.

I always recomend to read the book in Italian, but this translation is a good one. And if you want to make this reading a memorable experience listen Stephen sondheim's musical "Passion". His adaptation is perfect.
If you like Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre this book wil be one of your favourites

The title "Passione" comes from the name of the restaurant owned by the author who also is the head chef. It's a modest little place on Charlotte Street in London (www.passione.co.uk). If you are familiar with Charlotte Street you know what that means. It's a small, short street where you find one modest little place after another that have to rank among the best restaurants in the world. It's London's equivalent to Restaurant Row on West 46th Street in New York.

"Passione" fits that bill perfectly. It won the award as the best Italian restaurant in London in 2005.

I haven't tried all the recipies, that will take me a long time. But his recipies featuring polenta provide a couple of new variations on what mother used to make. But being in the south we called it grits instead. I must also say that his comments on using old fashioned grits rather than the new quick grits (taste kind of like library white paste) are exactly right. I'd even suggest that you spend some effort to find the coarse ground yellow grits done by people like Bob's Red Mill in Oregon or the Old Mill of Guilford in NC.

The other recipies I've tried are equally excellent. Tonight I'm going to do the king prawns with garlic and chili. His recipie is close to one that I've used before, but with a couple of new items that sound like they would make an interesting taste.

The best thing I can say about a cookbook is that this is one that I use.

It is almost certain that this book was written and published because Gennaro Contaldo is a mentor and close friend to the very celebrated chef Jamie Oliver. While the connection with Oliver and with Gennaro's own UK / Italian mentor, Antonio Carluccio adds interest to the book and while it is unlikely that I would have bought the book without these connections, I can with complete honesty say that this book stands on its own two feet as a good Italian cookbook and a superior evocation of life growing up in an Italian family where raising, growing, fishing, and hunting animals and plants for food was the whole family's primary avocation.

The stories of Gennaro's childhood, especially those directly related to hunting, fishing, and animal husbandry succeed in painting a picture of life along the Amalfi coast which succeeds much better than several culinary memoirs of Italy which I have recently read and reviewed. Mr. Contaldo is not a strong writer and I suspect he received a considerable amount of literary help in transcribing his oral memories of life in Southern Italy to paper. But, the stories are so vivid and so heart-felt that I can almost smell the blood and the sea and the mushrooms that are the subject of so many stories.

From the vantage point of an American who has read many stories of the romance northern Europeans feel for Italy, it is truly surprising to see a reverse of this scenario. Gennaro had a great desire to live and work in England as he was growing up in Italy. Once in the UK, he worked with several restaurants, including a stint in one of Antonio Carluccio's restaurants. When he was head chef at one London restaurant, he trained the young Jamie Oliver, who treats him as his London dad.

For American readers, please be prepared to deal with a few English terms for foods such as `Rocket' for Arugula, `Aubergines' for Eggplant, and `Courgettes' for Zucchini. All weights are in both metric (litres, grams, and Centigrade) and English (pints, ounces, and Fahrenheit). As I can visualize amounts more readily in metric than in English (I was a chemist), I am quite happy to have both. This book has value as a very good introduction to cooking in metric for those of you who are metrically challanged. The one place where measurements may be a challenge to most of us is with the flour units. All flour measurements for bread and pasta are given by weight (grams and pounds). So, you will need a kitchen scale to handle these.

The chapters organize recipes in exactly the way you would like and expect an Italian cookbook to lay things out. The English chapter titles are soup; pasta; risotto, polenta, gnocchi; fish and shellfish; meat, game, poultry; vegetables; tomatoes; mushrooms; snacks; bread; and desserts. The cuisine is not purely of Campania. There are lots of beans and pestos and rice and corn meal from northern Italy, but there certainly seem to be a lot more sparkle in the tomato and seafood recipes than in other recipes. Like all good traditional Italian chefs, Gennaro is fond of cooking with mushrooms, especially wild mushrooms such as porcini, although Seignior Contaldo is always careful to recommend a `garden variety' replacement for the wild fungi. The same is true of cheeses. Genarro will recommend the preferred Italian variety and specify a commonly available replacement if the traditional product cannot be found.

There is nothing new or profound in Gennaro's pasta making. He uses the same technique you will see done by Molto Mario Batali or Mr. Naked Chef Jamie Oliver. His bread making technique is also very similar to what I have seen in Jamie Oliver's books. It is distinctly non-artisinal, as it uses a relatively large (three to four times what I have seen elsewhere) amounts of yeast and fairly short rise times. I find it a perfect balance in the book to see a single pizza recipe for a genuine Neapolitan pizza and a single recipe for focaccia. Most other bread recipes are things like pane rustico with salami, cheese and eggs baked into a roll for taking along for a lunch while at work.

In general, there is nothing dramatically new here. All the soups and sauces and stuffed vegetables and pasta dishes have been seen before. But, Genarro succeeds in breathing life into all of these classics with a hard earned respect for ingredients which I find more genuine than what you see written by others.

The color photography of the food and the principals who created the book is competent and a little less than perfectly professional. It is almost as if the photographer made a point of keeping the rough edges on his technique to match the hearty vitality of the recipes. As the author and photographer took the trouble to return to Gennaro's hometown to do the food styling and photography, I believe that effort was well made. Gennaro's black and white snapshots of his family lend a charm consistent with the tone of the book. Congratulations for having the thoughtfulness to provide captions for these family snaps.

Highly recommended treatment of traditional Italian cuisine, with a genuine, enjoyable picture of the author's family and childhood. Most recipes are suitable for inexperienced cooks.