Customer Reviews

Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really love this book. Lidia places so much of her life into this book. It deals with more than just delicious recipes. Her book is packed with charming photos of her family throughout her life. You can tell she pours her life into book. The book is well organized and has a wide variety of Italian recipes, meaning this goes far beyond the traditional meatballs, and pasta. Her recipes include all sorts of delicious soup recipes, pasta, meats, breads, and desserts. With most recipes she gives you tips for what to do with left overs and how to reheat the recipes. The photography is stunning and very inspriational. If you like cookbooks that are more than just recipes, this is the book for you.

This third book from Lidia Bastianich has at least two things going for you can see from the dust jacket alone. First, it's from a PBS television series, which means the recipes were clearly worked over by a platoon of prep chefs and culinary producers, so the instructions are well exercized. Second, it's a winner of an IACP Cookbook award. They don't give these to just any compilation of recipes. A third clue that this book will be something special is that it's editor at Knopf is Judith Jones, the most celebrated cookbook editor of the last several decades, having begun her career by editing Julia Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. The last clue that this promises to be a rewarding book is that it is published by Knopf, my all time favorite American publisher which has an unsurpassed attention to the details of laying out an attractive book without the need for glitzy rotogravure.

As anyone who has spent any time watching Mario Batali on TV knows, Italian American food is different from Italian cuisine. Since there is a rather large industry of culinary journalists and chefs describing the true Italian regional cuisines, it's only fair that the Italian American derivatives be celebrated on their own merits.

Ms. Bastianich will not, however, be limiting herself strictly to Italian American hybrids. Some dishes are her own creations and some are purely Italian which never acquired an 'American accent'.

The chapter headings in the book are:
Antipasti

Soups
Pasta & Risotto
Pizza
Entrees
Contorni (Side Dishes)
Desserts and Coffee

I am happy to see there is no space dedicated to the extensive subject of Italian breads except for the brief chapter on Pizza, as this is a subject requiring a great attention to detail which would detract from the primary object of the book. I am also happy that no space or expense was devoted to wine pairings. While this is a worthy subject, I would rather know that all my money is going for quality recipes.

As Ms. Bastianich came from northern Italy (actually Istria, ceded to Yugoslavia at the end of World War II) and the great majority of immigrants from Italy to America came from southern Italy, the book ends up with a fairly balanced reflection of Italian cuisine as a whole.

One of the signal features of Italian American cooking is the mixing of meat with southern Italian tomato pasta dishes, as in Sugo di Carne and Spaghetti and meatballs. Of course, meat sauces are not unknown in Italy. Northern Italy has the Sugo alla Bolognese. In fact, Italian appears to have a special work, 'sugo' for meat sauces to distinguish them from meatless sauces such as 'salsa marinara' and 'salsa di pomodoro'.

Another signal feature of Italian American cooking is the apotheosis of garlic, which is used with even greater abandon than in the Italian south. Where Italians typically slice raw garlic, so you can easily skirt around it if you wish to keep a sweet breath, Americans are known to crush the daylights out of the cloves, making it's taste stronger and harder to avoid.

The book includes two very nicely done color photograph sections. Photos of food are free of the annoying out of focus closeups found elsewhere. There are good black and white photos demonstrating selected techniques, clearly being performed by the author herself. Photographs of family are endearing, clear, and well captioned.

I have cooked several recipes in this book and find them all delicious. Not all are easy and some may require some practice, but then, try to construct a mortise and tendon joint entirely from the directions in a book on carpentry.

This is true comfort food. Highly recommended.

I am an Italian American who grew up helping my mother cook. While I was a professional chef for many years and have maintained my interest in food after I moved on to a non-cooking career, I lost my touch with the foods of my youth. Lidia has given all my childhood memories back to me and then some.

The recipes are authentic because they turn out perfectly and they taste like I remember them. Best of all is their utter simplicity. Lidia's talent comes from combining a few very fresh ingredients using proper technique into a mouth watering dish.

Anyone who has seen the show knows the passion that Lidia has for food. Just watching her enjoy the dish she has prepared can make you hungry. Well, this passion spills over to the book in every recipe and in every description or cooks note in the book.

If you love Italian American food and want to get as close to authentic as you can get, then buy this book.

Recently made Lidia's Shrimp Scampi, the first Italian dish I've made besides spagetti and meatballs and it was awesome. My gourmet friends joined my wife and myself in a five star meal that would rate up there with the best my wife and I had in Italy this past fall.

You like Italian, you have to try this book!!

I've watched Lidia for quite some time on Public Television in Philadelphia. One of my in-laws received her cookbook for Christmas last year. So for the past year, I was debating whether to buy the book or not for myself. But, lucky for me, this cookbook found it's way under the Christmas tree this year.

Hopefully over the next couple of weeks I'll have the time to make a couple of the recipes. I'll update my review and let you know what happens. I'm sure I won't have any horror stories. Lidia is great!!!

Everyone knows that Lidia Bastianich knows Italian cuisine, but is this new cookbook of hers something you would want to have in your Italian cookbook collection? This cookbook was created from her popular television show, and in it Lidia shares the type of recipes she first found when arriving in America as a young woman. The recipes are pretty typical of basic Italian American cuisine, and you will find such standards as "Rigatoni alla Boscaiola", and "Bistecca alla Pizzaiola" throughout the book. I did not find any recipe in this book that I have not heard of before, although some were prepared a little differently than I am used to.

Almost all of these recipes would be right at home on my Italian Mother-In-Law's kitchen table, and could easily be reproduced by a cook with minimal experience. Peppered throughout the book are instructions with photographs of some basic kitchen skills that a novice cook would find very helpful. The photographs, although not plentiful enough for my taste are very attractive and will cause you to start planning your next Italian meal. Something I did find in this book was that all ingredients listed would be available to everyone which was not so in Lidia's previous books. In my opinion, although I did not find anything new or unique in Lidia's new book, if you enjoy Italian American food than this is one of the best references you will find available at this time.

This is one of my favorite cookbooks. When I got this book, my knowledge of cooking Italian food was pretty much limited to: boil the pasta, then pour some sauce out of a bottle. No longer! Lidia's recipes are easy to make and taste excellent.

I've made several scallopini dishes and loved them all. Also, I was induced to try her recipe for Eggplant Parmesan even though I've never liked eggplant, and it's now one of my favorites.

Most of the dishes are easily scaled down when cooking for one or two people. For instance, I halved the Eggplant Parmesan recipe and cooked it in a 9" square pan instead of a 9"X13" one, and it came out great.

The only things that seem disappointing are the vegetable side dishes - but maybe that's because I haven't tried any. None of them cry out for me to try them, but perhaps they will surprise me and be as good as the rest of the dishes in this book.

Overall, this is an excellent cookbook for the beginning Italian cook.

I know it may sound childish, but I really wish this book has color photos of some of the dishes. I've been a fan of Lidia's PBS TV show and there are plenty of good recipes and info in the cookbook, but part of making a cookbook interesting is to show how beautiful recipes can be. Because of that i'm only giving it 3 stars. Hopefully her new cookbook will include more color.

Lidia is an excellent chef, there's no disputing that. But I was rather dissapointed with this book. I bought "Lidia's Italian Table" which gave easy instructions on how to make absolutely 4-star gourmet food -- the likes of which I was not familiar. This book, however, is filled with familiar recipes. I'm sure Lidia gives a few helpful pointers here and there due to her infinite abilities as a cook, but I frankly don't think the cookbook is all that useful if you already know how to make a good meat sauce. Good if you don't though, she'll lay out all the basics for you.

These are good, unfussy recipes that reliably recreate the "taste memory" of Italian-American classics. My favorites are poached seafood salad, penne alla vodka and the various scallopine recipes. The book contains excellent illustrations. I especially appreciated the very easy to follow step-by-step instructions for cleaning squid. My only quibble is that Lydia sometimes forgets to say what to do with some ingredients. Lydia, oh what, oh what do I do with the lemon juice that you had me squeeze and reserve for the scallopine piccata?