Naples At Table [Hardcover]

Naples gave the world pizza and spaghetti with tomato sauce. In Naples at Table, Arthur Schwartz reveals the unexpected breadth and depth of dishes to be enjoyed in Naples and throughout Campania, the rich region where this culinarily underappreciated city is located.

Campania is the home of mozzarella. In fact, by Italian law, only cheese made from the milk of the water buffalo of Campania should be bear this name; the cow's-milk cheese we call mozzarella is more rightly called fior di latte, "flower of the milk."

To most people, southern Italy is the land of red sauce, from the light salsa insalata, made with raw tomatoes marinated in olive oil and seasoned with salt and basil, to hefty, long-simmered, meat-flavored ragu. Schwartz introduces us to La Genovese, an onion-based sauce Neapolitans began making centuries before the tomato arrived from the New World so they could pair it with its soul mate, pasta.

Anyone interested in Italian food will find the more than 250 recipes and the almost overwhelming wealth of information in Naples at Table fascinating. There is history, going back to the ancient Greeks, and stories as only Schwartz can recount them. One of the best is how Zuppa Inglese may have gotten its name. Discover Woodman-Style Baked Pasta with Meat Sauce and Mushrooms; lusty Baccalà "Arrecanato," a casserole of salt cod and potatoes; an authentic Zuppa Inglese; and so much more as you travel around Campania with Schwartz, meeting chefs and home cooks from Naples and Salerno, Benevento up in the mountains, out along the Amalfi coast, and the jewel-like islands of Ischia and Capri. --Dana Jacobi

Radio personality Schwartz (Soup Suppers) brings to the kitchen the food and culture of Campania in yet another close look at the food of an Italian region. CampaniaAand in particular its capital, NaplesAis known for an earthy cooking style. It is also the birthplace of both spaghetti and pizza, which are amply represented here in Spaghetti with Cabbage, Spaghetti in a Hurry (Spaghetti Sciu? Sciu? alla Caprese), Pizza di Scarola (made with escarole, olives, pine nuts and raisins) and the traditional Pizza Margherita (tomatoes, mozzarella and basil). Dishes like Rosa Mazzella's Fritters with Salt Cod, Olives, and Capers, and Battered and Fried Cheese evidence a local love of frying. Stretching meat appears to be a specialty of the area, where dishes such as Veal Meatballs in Eggplant Scarves and Neapolitan Meatloaf (made with prosciutto, soppressata, provolone and pecorino cheese) take precedence over whole pieces of beef. Anecdotes and bits of history like the segment on buffalo mozzarella are entertaining, and the enjoyment continues with a chapter on desserts and extras, which includes the unusual Eggplant with Chocolate and Limoncello, the lemon liqueur made famous on the island of Capri.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"...simple, straightforward and traditional recipes...informative and often amusing commentary also make this a pleasant page turner." -- -- The Washington Post

"I made 'Bucatini alla Caruso,' named for the tenor Enrico Caruso, who loved to prepare it for his friends in Brooklyn, singing his way from restaurant to restaurant...Although I did not sing as I served, my friends did sing my praises...claiming it was one of the best pasta dishes they've ever had. The leftovers were even good the next day, reheated with supplements of garlic, tomato and ricotta." -- -Erica Schachter, Wall Street Journal

"...a labor of love for WOR's 'Food Talk' host, Arthur Schwartz...blunt, impudent, passionate voice of the people that he is...I plan to use it as my travel guide to Naples." -- Gael Greene, New York Magazine

"Arthur Schwartz has long been enamored of the foods of southern Italy. Here he shows that the same cuisine which in its Americanization has perhaps become too rich and heavy can be as subtle as the trendier cuisine from Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany." -- Dale Salm, Connecticut Magazine

"Arthur Schwartz was born to write this fabulous book full of dishes on every page you will instantly want to try. The notes are both wholly informative and dead-on accurate, the recipes clear, the illustrations excellent, and...for 250 recipes spread over 430 pages, this is the bargain of the decade." -- John Mariani, Mariani's Virtual Gourmet Newsletter

"Arthur Schwartz's king-size introduction to Neapolitan cooking...has that labor-of-love air you find in books by Americans who feel an almost religious mission to share the pleasure they take in some other place. By exploring everything but everything about the general region of Campania as if it were irresistibly fascinating, Schwartz makes it so...This is as close as you can get to total immersion in Naples by reading and cooking." -- Anne Mendelson, Gourmet

"As Arthur Schwartz makes happily clear, the food of this southern seaport city encompasses not only pizza but also Peppered Mussels, Prosciutto Brioche and Smothered Escarole. The information is encyclopedic." -- Ann Hodgman, Food & Wine

Arthur Schwartz's NAPLES AT TABLE has "captured the wonders of Naples cooking and all that goes with it. The book is both learned and sensual...Just reading the recipes makes me hungry...This Christmas I gave NAPLES AT TABLE to friends who like cookbooks, and now I'm thinking of going to Naples in the summer. That's how much I loved it." -- Irene Sax, epicurious.com

Arthur Schwartz, popular radio host, cookbook author, and veteran restaurant critic, invites you to join him as he celebrates the food and people of Naples and Campania. Encompassing the provinces of Avellino, Benevento, Caserta, and Salerno, the internationally famous resorts of the Amalfi Coast, Capri, and Ischia -- and, of course, Naples itself, Italy's third largest and most exuberant city -- Campania is the cradle of Italian-American cuisine.

In Naples at Table, Arthur Schwartz takes a fresh look at the region's major culinary contributions to the world -- its pizza, dried pasta, seafood, and vegetable dishes, its sustaining soups and voluptuous desserts -- and offers the recipes for some of Campania's lesser-known specialties as well. Always, he provides all the techniques and details you need to make them with authenticity and ease.

Naples at Table is the first cookbook in English to survey and document the cooking of this culturally important and gastronomically rich area. Schwartz spent years traveling to Naples and throughout the region, making friends, eating at their tables, working with home cooks and restaurant chefs, researching the origins of each recipe. Here, then, are recipes that reveal the truly subtle, elegant Neapolitan hand with such familiar dishes as baked ziti, eggplant parmigiana, linguine with clam sauce, and tomato sauces of all kinds.

This is the Italian food the world knows best, at its best -- bold and vibrant flavors made from few ingredients, using the simplest techniques. Think Sophia Loren -- and check out her recipe for Chicken Caccistora! Discover the joys of preparing a timballo like the pasta-filled pastry in the popular film Big Night. Or simply rediscover how truly delicious, satisfying, and healthful Campanian favorites can be -- from vegetable dished such as stuffed peppers and garlicky greens to pasta sauces you can make while the spaghetti boils or the Neapolitans' famous long-simmered ragu, redolent with the flavors of meat and red wine. Then there's the succulent baked lamb Neapolitans love to serve to company, the lentils and pasta they make for family meals, baked pastas that go well beyond the red-sauce stereotype, their repertoire of deep-fried morsels, the pan of pork and pickled peppers so dear to Italian-American hearts, and the most delicate meatballs on earth. All are wonderfully old-fashioned and familiar, yet in hands of a Neapolitan, strikingly contemporary and ideal for today's busy cooks and nutrition-minded sybarites.

Finally, what better way to feed a sweet tooth than with a Neapolitan dessert? Ice cream and other frozen fantasies were brought to their height in Baroque Naples. Baba, the rum-soaked cake, still reigns in every pastry shop. Campamnians invented ricotta cheesecake, and Arthur Schwartz predicts that the region's easily assembled refrigerator cakes -- delizie or delights -- are soon going to replace tiramisu on America's tables. In any case, one bite of zuppa inglese, a Neapolitan take on English trifle, and you'll be singing "That's Amore."

A trip with Arthur Schwartz to Naples and its surrounding regions is the next best thing to being there. Join him as he presents the finest traditional and contemporary foods of the region, and shares myth, legend, history, recipes, and reminiscences with American fans, followers, and fellow lovers of all things Italian.

I acclimated quickly to Naples. The palm trees in the park along the sea seduced me. The decrpiet Baroque splendor of the city stunned me...And, of course, there was the food. The catering shops carried all kinds of macaroni-filled pastries, individual size and huge ones to cut a wedge from; cakes of fried pasta, fried balls of rice, stacks of vegetable frittatas, baked lasagne, and ziti. There were fry shops with fritters and croquettes, trendy pizzerias with long pies sold by the meter, and traditional pizzerias, every surface white marble, where I first learned to eat pizza with a knife and fork. I indulged in pastries and baba every morning and afternoon, drank short, powerful coffeess all day, and finished each evening with a stroll and a gelato. I ate linguine with clams oin Posillpo (then took a nap on a jetty on the sea); drank Gredo di Tufo (whoite winer) and stuffed myself and buffalo mozzarella at every opportunity. I could see right away it was a tough place to eat through, so I kept going back for more.

There were still warm almond-studded taralli, rings of crisp lard dough, from a street vendor by the sea, pasta and beans on a nineteenth-century trattoria, lamb ragu and cavatelli in the hills of Benevento, goat ragu and fusilli in the Monti Alburni, squid and potatoes on Capri, rabbit braised in tomatoes on Ischia, fish stew at the beach near Gaeta, the lemon chicken in Ravello.
from the introduction

Arthur Schwartzhosts "Food Talk," a popular New York City-based, nationally syndicated radio show, and was the longtime restaurant critic and food editor of the New York Daily News. He is the author of Cooking in a Small Kitchen, What to Cook When You Think There's Nothing in the House to Eat, and Soup Suppers.