La Cucina Di Lidia [Hardcover]

Lidia Matticchio Bastianich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1990

The owner of New York's celebrated Felidia presents a collection of over 120 simple but sophisticated recipes from the cuisine of her native Istria, spiced with tidbits of history and tradition and seasoned with warm family memories.

B & W and full-color photographs throughout

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Bastianich is a co-owner (with her husband) and chef of New York's Felidia Ristorante, Jacobs a food journalist and restaurant reviewer; together they have written a remarkable book. Part memoir, part cookbook, it showcases Bastianich's unique cuisine, which is at heart Italian but influenced by Yugoslavian, German, and Hungarian cooking. The text is both intensely personal, with evocative reminiscences of growing up in Istria or of the origins of the various dishes, and knowledgeable and wide-ranging, with discussions of ingredients and difficult techniques and informed wine suggestions. Highly recommended.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"America’s most passionate and talented Italian cook has produced a masterful book–bursting with personal and supremely useful recipes. Here is the essence of Istrian culture distilled into a unique volume. Lidia, you are wonderful. Mille grazie!"
-Anthony Dias Blue


From the Trade Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1st edition (November 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385245114
• ISBN-13: 978-0385245111
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,059,137 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lidia Matticchio Bastianich was born in Pola, Istria on the northeastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. She is a cookbook author, restaurateur, and one of the best-loved chefs on television. Cookbooks include her latest, Lidia's Italy--a companion book to her new television series, Lidia's Family Table, Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen, Lidia's Italian Table, and La Cucina di Lidia. She is also founder and president of Tavola Productions, which produces quality broadcast shows, like Lidia's Italy.

Lidia is the chef/owner of acclaimed New York City restaurants Felidia, Becco, Esca and Del Posto as well as Lidia's in Pittsburgh and Kansas City. Along with her son Joseph, Lidia produces award-winning wines at the Bastianich and La Mozza wineries in Friuli and Maremma. With her daughter, Tanya Bastianich Manuali, and Shelly Burgess Nicotra, she heads an exclusive travel company that implements excursions to Italy that combine gastronomy with art history.

Lidia stays active in community service on behalf of the James Beard Foundation and Public Television. More information can be found on her website: www.lidiasitaly.com. Her signature line is 'Tutti a tavola a mangiare!' meaning, 'Everybody to the table to eat!' This simple phrase epitomizes Lidia's true recipe for success.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some reservations about this book, January 19, 2004

By 

Don DeMaio (Barrington, RI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: La Cucina Di Lidia (Hardcover)

I love Lidia and love her style of cooking. This was her first book and therein lies the rub. I found this book almost inpenetrable. Great stories about her childhood in Istria, but the recipes are almost universally unusable. Octopus salad, cuttlefish sacs, etc. Not the kind of thing you'd be inclined to try in your own kitchen. Lidia is very bright, that much is obvious. But I think she'd tried too hard to impress us with her intellect. I'd try another of her titles, if I were you.

29 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A DELICIOUS FEAST!!!, May 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: La Cucina Di Lidia (Hardcover)

A book close to my heart. My family hails from the island of Krk just south of Istria. As a first generation American I am fortunate to have the flavorings of the Adriatic in my soul and palate. This book literally brought tears to my eyes. My family will have hours of enjoyment from this book. As a fellow child of Astoria,Queens---HVALA LIDIA!!!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Home cooking, with elegance, August 1, 2006

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: La Cucina Di Lidia (Hardcover)

This is really two books, largely interleaved with each other. The cookbook is the more obvious one. It's where Lidia - never truly separable from her husband Felice - exposes the secrets of her kitchen. Correction: kitchens, plural. These are the recipes that have kept the lines long outside of her restaurants back to the early 1970s. Struggling against American palates trained on TV dinners, they addressed and quite possibly created a clientele who discovered that there was more to Italian food than tomato sauce.

Lidia has extensive professional education, undertaken while she was a young mother and beginning restauranteur (this is the weaker sex?!?). She and her husband traveled most of Europe, studying the national and even regional specialties of each culinary tradition. Although training and research inform this book, that's not where it really comes from. It comes, through her personal alchemy, from her grandmother's truck garden. That's where the second book within this one binding comes in. That book is Lidia's culinary biography, from her earliest girlhood in Adriatic Italy up to the book's 1990 writing.

The family wasn't rich. Meat was a rarity, and every part of the animal went into the pot: heart, kidney, liver, blood for black sausage, and (in this pre-BSE book) brain. Produce was fresh from the garden, though, and slaughtering the animal was part of cooking with meat. Plain cooking can be exquisite cooking, however. Lidia's close contact with every aspect of the food gave her a bone-deep appreciation for unique character of ever plant and animalin her kitchen. Her secret is really no secret at all: it lies in using the finest and freshest ingredients, and in knowing the preparation that lets each be the best it can.

//wiredweird