Cooking the Roman Way [Hardcover]

David Downie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 22, 2002

Rome is the most beloved city in Italy, if not the world. Rich in culture, art, and charm, the Eternal City is also home to some of the most delicious and accessible cooking in all of Italy. Influenced by both the earthy peasant fare of the surrounding hillsides and the fish from the nearby Mediterranean, Roman food makes the most of local ingredients and simple, age-old techniques. Yet while Italian cookbooks abound, no American book has focused on Romes unique and varied fare. In this beautifully illustrated cookbook, author David Downie and photographer Alison Harris offer a comprehensive collection of more than 125 Roman recipes, exploring the lively, uncomplicated food traditionally served in Roman homes and trattorie. From well-known dishes like Spaghetti Carbonara, to popular snack food like Pizza Bianca, to distinctive specialties like Roast Suckling Lamb, each recipe in Cooking the Roman Way is simple, authentic, and easy to make at home. With four-color photographs of landmarks, markets and food, stories about and profiles of food vendors, entertaining anecdotes, and a food lovers guide to the streets of the city, this book paints a vivid picture of Rome and the food that has sustained it for millennia.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

David Downie's delectable Cooking the Roman Way begins with an irresistible invitation: "Close your eyes and imagine you're in Rome, seated al fresco in the sun on a rooftop terrace...." This is a must-have cookbook for anyone who loves Italy and its food, serious cooks and armchair cooks alike. The recipes are simple, well-researched, and perfectly authentic. Downie delivers history and tradition so vividly you feel as though you went to Rome and learned these facts for yourself, and Alison Harris's photos help make that impression all the more real.

The more than 100 recipes are divided by course. Antipasti include the venerable Sweet-And-Sour Baby Pearl Onions, even more addictive than, Downie warns, Farro Risotto Balls with Basil and Parmigiano-Reggiano, little deep-fried nuggets of comfort food. Primi piatti include the aromatic Fennel and Bean Soup with Cherry Tomatoes, Mint, Basil, and Sage, and plenty of pasta recipes, any of which would make a great meal. Secondi cover meat, poultry, fish, and eggs, and include the marvelously rich Roman Oxtail Stew, and Spicy Boned Lamb Leg Sautéed with Rosemary, Wine, and Vinegar. Contorni are vegetables and side dishes, such as Sweet Pepper Rolls Stuffed with Cheese and Anchovy, and dolci include desserts such as Ricotta Lemon Fritters with Sambuca and Fresh Strawberry Tiramisu. Beautiful enough to give as a gift, easy enough to use every day, Downie will definitely have you Cooking the Roman Way. --Leora Y. Bloom

From Publishers Weekly

Food writer Downie explores the streets and alleys of Rome, gathering recipes from trattoria chefs, home cooks, and even his Roman-born mother in this wonderfully complete culinary tour of the Eternal City. The food of Rome has both inspired and been inspired by the food from other regions throughout Italy, and Downie highlights each recipe with history and anecdotes. For starters, Downie explores Rome's Jewish Ghetto and appears with Carciofi alla Giuda (Fried Artichokes, Jewish Style) and Fiori di Zucca Fritti (Fried Zucchini Flowers). Ubiquitous throughout Italy are two dishes-both of which are made with guanciale, cured pork jowl, and generous helpings of Pecorino Romano cheese: the Bucatini all'Amatriciana (named for the mountain town southeast of Rome) and the Spaghetti alla Carbonara (which many believe got its name from the dish's carbon-looking pepper flakes). Main meals include Martino al Forno (Monkfish Baked on a Bed of Lemony Potatoes) and the comfort dish, Frittata con le Zucchine (Zucchini Frittata with Fresh Mint and Pecorino Romano). For dessert there's the Christmastime special, Fichi Ripieni (Dried Figs Stuffed with Ricotto and Almonds and a summer cooler, La Granita di Caffe della Tazza d'Oro, a coffee granita. In his first cookbook, Downie has beautifully and evocatively captured the cuisine of one of the world's best-known cities.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks; 1 edition (October 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060188928
• ISBN-13: 978-0060188924
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 8.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #690,933 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A native San Franciscan, I've called Paris home since 1986. I live and work in the Marais, and travel widely in France and Italy.
For over 20 years my travel, food, wine and arts features have appeared in about 50 magazines and newspapers worldwide, from Bon Appetit, Gastronomica, The Los Angeles Times and Town & Country Travel to the San Francisco Chronicle, concierge.com, epicurious.com, salon.com and gadling.com. I've been contributing editor, European arts editor or Paris correspondent for half a dozen magazines, and am currently a European correspondent for gadling, the popular literary travel website, as well as theramblingepicure.com, a site dedicated to real food.
My latest web venture is wanderingliguria.com, featuring everything you ever wanted to know about the Italian Riviera (Cinque Terre, Portofino, Genoa and more).
After writing a cookbook or two in the 1990s and early 2000s, I put together 30 essays about Paris and published them under the title Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light, with striking black-and-white photography by Alison Harris (www.alisonharris.com). The book got raves, went through multiple print runs, and was reissued in a fully updated, expanded and redesigned edition--with photos by Alison--in the prestigious Armchair Traveler series published by Broadway Books (Random House).
My other recent books include Paris City of Night, a classic thriller set in Paris; and three Terroir Guides--Food Wine Italian Riviera & Genoa, Food Wine Rome, and Food Wine Burgundy, published by The Little Bookroom.
In March 2011 the same publisher brought out the lavishly illustrated travel book Quiet Corners of Rome, with more stunning photography, again by Alison Harris.
For bite-sized portions, try some of the anthologies I've contributed to, from The Collected Traveler Paris, Southwest France and Italy to Salon.com's Wanderlust; Travelers Tales: Adventures in Wine Country; Saveur Cooks Authentic French and Italian; Pizza: A Slice of Heaven; the best-selling Secrets of the Code and Secrets of Angels & Demons; the humor anthology By The Seat of My Pants; and A Moveable Feast.
After a quarter century I continue to enjoy living in Paris, and working and traveling throughout Europe, especially Italy. And I enjoy sharing my experiences with my readers, and taking them on private tours of Paris, Rome, Burgundy and the Italian Riviera. Please visit my personal website www.davidddownie.com and my "Paris, Paris Tours" blog site: http://parisparistours.blogspot.com/. All the best, David

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shootout in the Forum. Two excellent books. One Winner, December 27, 2003

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cooking the Roman Way (Hardcover)

Two books on Roman cooking have appeared within the last eighteen (18) months, which gives us a golden opportunity to proof one against the other to find the better book. The first published last year, the current subject, is `Cooking the Roman Way' by David Downie. The second is the more recently published book `In a Roman Kitchen: Timeless Recipes from the Eternal City' by Jo Bettoja.

In general, Downie's book appears to be based more on restaurante, trattoria, and osteria recipes while Bettoja seems to rely more on home cooking recipes. Still, there is a significant overlap of recipe names. I had no trouble at all finding five recipes with the same traditional Italian name, although the English translation of the name may have been a little different. I give high marks to both authors for giving the Italian names of all dishes in both the text and the index.

I compared the recipes for five dishes:

Gnocchi di Semolino alla Romana
Spaghetti alla Carbonara
Cipolline in Agrodolce alla Romana
Carciofi alla Giudia
Frittata con Zucchini

Although no pair of recipes was the same, I can find virtually nothing in these five recipes which would suggest that one author was presenting consistently superior recipes. I was slightly annoyed with Downie for specifying white coctail onions in the Cipolline recipe, especially since I have no trouble finding cipolline in my local Pennsylvania megamart. My conclusion that Downie relies on the Trattoria and Bettoja relies on the home is in the sources they cite for their recipes. Both appear to give equal time to the influence of the Jewish quarter on Roman cooking.

In Bettoja's case, the focus seems to be on a large number of recipes for each major type of Roman dish. She has, for example, more pasta, artichoke, and fava bean recipes than Downie, and also more dessert recipes. This is ironic since Downie controverts one of my hero Mario Batali's claims that Italians do not go in for sweets.

In contrast, Downie includes many seminally Roman recipes which Bettoja simply ignores. He has excellent recipes for making both Pizza Bianco, a certifiable Roman speciality, and fresh fettucini, including sound recommendations on making the fettucini completely by hand and with the assistance of power mixers and power pasta rolling machines. Most surprising of all is that Downie includes the recipe for Gnocchi di Patate while Bettoja does not. My understanding from Mario is that this is a Roman speciality and every trattoria in Rome serves it on Thursday. Alternately, Claudia Roden identifies it as a northern (Friuli) Italian speciality. Since Downie specifically cites potato gnocchi as the Roman canonical dish for Thursday and thereby agrees with Mario, I have to assume that while the dish may be promenant outside Rome, it is certainly a distinctively Roman dish as well.

Bettoja is a teacher who runs her own culinary school in Rome while Downie is a culinary journalist, so it surprises me that it is Downie who has the superior sidebars on some basic techniques such as how to clean an artichoke (sidebars with step by step photographs) and how to roast and skin sweet peppers.

Even though Bettoja's book is later and even though the books have identical list prices and almost identical page counts, Downie's book is much richer in the quality and quantity of it's photographs, almost all with useful captions. I generally do not count good photography to a cookbook's credit, but in the case of a book dedicated to so photogenic a location as Rome, I must make an exception here. For the identical price, Downie and his photographer and editors have simply done a much better job. Downie's book is also richer in sidebars on general Roman and Italian culinary matters. The sidebar on the sources of Pecorino Romano, which is made in greater quanities in Sardinia than it is in Lazio, was a great surprise. His headnotes for individual dishes are also richer in explaining the history of many dishes such as Fettucini Alfredo and Fettucini alla Papalina.

In the battle of the blurbs, Downie has Mario and Carol Field while Bettoja has Lidia Bastianich and Frances Mayes on her back cover. I think that's a tie.

I would buy both of these books, even with the rather substantial overlap in named dishes. The overlap is actually a plus for amateur foodie scholars, as it gives one the sense of exactly how different two sources can be with exactly the same dish. Bettoja is a great source for pasta recipes and Roman desserts, while Downie has much greater success at evoking the Roman ambiance and in covering deeper techniques. Downie also wins the points on domestic sources for flour and other Italian specialities. Bettoja rather quixotically gives us the telephone numbers of companies in Rome. Not very useful unless you plan to visit Rome in the near future.

Both books are recommended. If you need to choose one, I would pick Downie's book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Indispensable book for any Italian food lover, November 11, 2002

By 

A.J.Brinton (Burgundy, France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cooking the Roman Way (Hardcover)

A book on the cooking of Rome was long overdue. Hooray for David Downie and his meticulous research into the myriad secrets of Rome's great culinary traditions! I was enchanted to find a recipe for Vignarola, that incomparable Roman spring vegetable stew, and to discover delicious new pasta dishes such as a mouth-watering concoction of spaghetti with fresh favas, lettuce hearts and pancetta. Not to mention the sublime sweet peppers stuffed with mozzarella and anchovies and the delectable fried artichokes - Roman-style. David Downie vividly brings alive the day-to-day, season-to-season, rich kaleidoscope of the eternal city's trattorias, open-air markets, butchers, bakers and grocers galore.This beautiful book is richly illustrated by Alison Harris's marvellous photographs which admirably capture the essence of Rome and the Romans. Bravo Downie and Harris for an indispensable addition to any food lover or serious cook's library. Cooking the Roman Way certainly tops my Christmas gift list!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars buy this book!, November 8, 2002

By 

Robert Tolmach "rtolmach" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cooking the Roman Way (Hardcover)

A friend sent me a review of Cooking the Roman Way. The reviewer made it sound too good to be true, so I ordered a copy to find out. Even for a passionate but untrained foodie like me, I've got to say that this is a great piece of work -- it's funny and articulate -- a literate cookbook that reads like a cross between fine travel writing and memoir. I have also found a bunch of classic Roman recipes that anyone can do -- bruschetta, spaghetti with garlic and hot pepper, Carbonara, Amatriciana, crostini with anchovies (my girlfriend loved that one in particular). I have been to Rome a couple of times and everything in the book rang true -- the atmosphere, the cooking style, the sites, the sensuality. Now I'm recommending the book to everyone I know, both for their own use and as gifts. What a find. Kudos (or however you say it in Italian) to the the author and photographer!