Regional Foods of Southern Italy

By Marlena de Blasi

Book Overview

Marlena de Blasi's lifelong affair with cooking began at age nine on a beach along the coast of Italy, where she met an elderly woman roasting potatoes coated with olive oil, rosemary, and sea salt over an open fire. "It was then," de Blasi recalls, "that I began to understand that the way people eat and drink is a measure of them." Following her Regional Foods of Northern Italy--already established as a charming classic on the cookbook shelves--Regional Foods of Southern Italy distills the essence of the region's traditional foods in a beautifully wrought amalgam of narrative and recipe.Regional Foods of Southern Italy takes us from Rome, where we eat a sumptuous Christmas Eve fish supper, through the harsh magnificence of Abruzzi's mountains to Naples, where we find the one true pizza and make a slight detour for the mythical orange tart of Capri. Our journey continues down the Amalfi coast through the ancient reaches of Puglia, where we find Pasta in Black, the ultimate comfort food, pause in little-known Basilicata for Honeyed Wild Rabbit braised with Chestnuts, and jolt our palates with Calabrian ricotta forte before ending up in Sicily and Sardinia.Here are more than 150 authentic recipes in a beautiful two-color cookbook that is " about simplicity and innocence . . . and about the stories, inextricably woven into and wedded to the food."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670883840
• ISBN13: 9780670883844
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 270 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.8" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Regional Foods of Southern Italy

Excellent service, prompt delivery, excellent conditon as described, packaged well. Would use again.

MUCH, MUCH MORE THAN AN ITALIAN COOKBOOK!

What a wonderful book! The stories associated with the recipes are just amazing. Especially the story of Elisabetta, the seventy year old restaurateur--who began her career at the age of sixty-one--that told the author she has just come into her stride. The Polenta with Braised Pork and Roasted Red Peppers recipe that was included with this story was great. If you have an opportunity to purchase this book, and you have the time and patience to allow some of these recipes to develop you and whoever you serve will be richly rewarded. There are recipes of seafood, pasta, pork and lamb. Some of the recipes are quick and simple, with simple ingredients. Some of the recipes require more ingredients, as well as time. However, my book is marked with post-it-notes on many recipes that I cannot wait to present to my family.

Connecting with the spirit of Southern Italian cooking

This is an extraordinary book. I have never had a "cookbook" like this one and have come to treasure Marlena De Blasi's work. Like the other reviewers, I would agree that this is not a simple, "learn the basics of Italian cooking" cookbook. It is, however, well worth the time spent learning about these recipes and their cultural context. Ms De Blasi succeeds in connecting the reader with the spirit, with the essence, with the history and the context of cooking in Southern Italy. Each recipe, or group of recipes, is preceeded by wonderful descriptions of where, when and how the dish was made over the centuries. It give the reader a feel for the people who developed these recipes over time, and the forces that led them to create. I have read the cookbook cover to cover and found it delightful. Surprisingly open but a great pleasure as you get to know Marlena and her husband. I have also cooked about 2 dozen of the recipes. Some are somewhat complicated but nearly all turned out wonderfully. Some of the greatest successes are the seafood (particularly mussels done several different ways and a roasted rockfish/sea bass) and the many (often simple) pastas. Regional Foods of Southern Italy is a rare, and invaluable, find.

Best meals I've ever had

This book certainly has more prose than necessary, but the recipes are the important part - and these recipes are great. If you are looking for simple, rustic, italian recipes, there are plenty of other books to chose from. This author, however, provides the best collection of recipes that goes beyond the basics, providing the reader with meals you won't see anywhere. The recipe for chestnut flour-ricotta gnocchi are a good example.

DESERVES TO BE IN THE KITCHEN OF EVERY SERIOUS COOK

As I write this review, the book is out-of-stock. I want to share this book with everyone, so I am hoping that my review will change things around. First of all, the recipes in this book are complex -- but -- there are books that are much more challenging. Haute Mexican and Japanese cuisine are more difficult, the first because it grew out of a class culture where the food was cooked by maids the second because it is so unlike western food. There are things in this book that are exotic, even to Bostonians where "the Italian North End" was made such an imprint on the city. There is a pasta based on yeast raised dough that is wonderful on a winter's night when snow is falling. There are superb chicken dishes and magnificent desserts. This one of only two cookbooks that I have wanted to go through, page by page, recipe by recipe, and cook everything.