THE ROMAGNOLIS' TABLE: Italian Family Recipes

by Romagnoli; Margaret & G. Franco ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 25, 1975

Sure, there are too many Italian cookbooks already, but this one has several advantages. It doesn't pretend to be encyclopedic: it gives a small-to-middling selection of recipes (for example, eight antipasti, nine veal dishes) in a number of exceedingly well-chosen categories, and really tells you something about the ingredients and the preparation. The Romagnolis include some intriguing out-of-the-ways like Italian mashed potatoes with eggs and ""a hint"" -- one teaspoon! -- of nutmeg, but they are more likely to do a conscientious and enlightening job on the familiar. For example, the pasta sauces are lovingly grouped according to degree of complexity or type of ingredients, so you can easily pick and choose depending on the nature of the meal. They are not absolute purists and will include canned or frozen ingredients on occasion, if that's your criterion. But they do hammer away at a few essentials of procedure, especially the need for a battuto (a mixture of vegetables, salt pork, and sometimes fresh herbs minced together, not separately, until they form a sort of paste) as the indispensable foundation of many sauces, soups, and stews. An eminently usable cookbook, less expensive than the other new aristocrat in the field, Marcella Hazan's Classic Italian Cookbook (1973). Promotion tie-in with the Romagnolis' current NET cooking series should give it an extra boost.

Pub Date: April 25, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atlantic/Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1975

Categories: NONFICTION