A mouth-watering cookbook that joyfully celebrates authentic Italian flavors with simple, seasonal recipes.
A diverse collection of Italian recipes with a focus on seasonal cooking.
Brancatisano presents a body of beloved Italian recipes that, in keeping with her belief that “the essence of great Italian cooking” includes “respecting the seasons,” is divided into five sections—one for each season, and a bonus “basics” section that covers eight staple dishes like meat broth, tomato sauce, and focaccia. Each seasonal section contains recipes that range from appetizers and pasta to proteins (including veal and lamb), as well as desserts. Each recipe opens with a brief paragraph or two detailing the dish’s origin and suggesting the best way to serve it. The author also occasionally offers alternative variations—the “spring” section’s crocchette di patate (potato croquettes), for example, can be made with or without breadcrumbs. “Summer” focuses on dishes using fresh fruits and vegetables, such as pappa al pomodoro. The “autumn” and “winter” sections lean more heavily on earthier recipes, like zuppa di castagne e funghi (chestnut and mushroom soup) and risotto radicchio e gorgonzola. Gorgeous full-color, full-page photographs of the dishes are included alongside the recipes—these are all fairly short (one page or less), which allows Brancatisano to include an impressive number of them (21 to 28 in each section). While all the dishes look impressive, the actual preparation and work that go into them are not beyond a beginner’s grasp. Even when tackling the intricate torta mimosa (a sponge cake with diplomat cream filling and limoncello syrup, and the single exception to the “one page or less” format), the steps never feel overwhelming or overly complicated. While certain dishes, such as spaghetti al nero di seppia (spaghetti in squid ink), may seem a bit too adventurous for some readers, Brancatisano offers a delightful blend of the familiar and the unexpected—all conveyed with a warm and encouraging voice that coaxes out even the most reluctant chef.
A mouth-watering cookbook that joyfully celebrates authentic Italian flavors with simple, seasonal recipes.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781947431584
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Mentoris Project
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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