Customer Reviews

La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I hadn't really paid much attention to this book -- all the copies I'd seen were sold shrink-wrapped, and I'm not keen on dropping lots of money on a book I'm not at least somewhat familiar with. "La Cucina" hadn't gotten a lot of press, but it's certainly difficult to miss on the shelf, so when I did finally get around to flipping through an unwrapped copy, I was sold on the spot.

There is nothing wrong with The Silver Spoon or La Marcella -- the Silver Spoon is bare-bones textwise but has astonishingly beautiful photography, and "Essentials" is more or less the Italian equivalent of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. But both of those books focus largely on the commonalities of Italian cuisine; as any aficionado of Italian food knows, Italian cooking is highly regionalized, varying drastically from the Arab and Greek influences of southern Italy to the powerful flavors of central Italy (especially Rome, Tuscany, and Emilia-Romagna) to the Germanic, Slavic, and French influences of northern Italy. It's reasonably easy to find good books on the individual regions, but efforts such as the usually reliable Claudia Roden's the Food of Italy: Region by Region tend to fall flat by virtue of having to cover everything at once. Along comes the Academmia Italiana della Cucina, which pulled out all the stops and let the chips fall where they may -- the resulting book is, by its own admission, the size of a phone book, but is a remarkable collection of family and local recipes, some so obscure that their names only exist in dialect. Although most of the classics are here, this is surprisingly not a straightforward Italian recipe reference; rather, it's a scrapbook that compliments a more regimented book like the ones mentioned above. And it is very scrapbooky -- quite a few recipes are given in multiple variations, usually demonstrating regional differences in well-known dishes.

The organization is strange, but makes sense... after a while. The two indexes are organized by region and ingredient, but only give English language names; if you happen to know the dish by the Italian name, however, the book is organized quite simply, by arranging the dishes in alphabetical order by their names in either standard Italian or (in a great many cases) dialect. It takes a while to get used to but manages to be consistently workable without a great deal of pain. The book is devoid of pictures, all the better to pack in more unusual and tasty recipes, and the layout is contemporary without being quirky or annoying (very much, in fact, like a Workman book without all the clutter).

This is not a remotely inexpensive book, and you may balk at buying it in combination with one of the books I mentioned above, but it's great either by itself or in combination with those others. If it's just the basics you're after, this will probably be overkill and might leave you a little high and dry on the common things, but if you're all about the obscure and unusual, this is an excellent choice.

This book is similar to The Silver Spoon including a vast array of recipes (over 900 pages!) but La Cucina provides the history and background of most recipes, along with a tag telling you from where in Italy the recipe originated. There are also anecdotes aoute traditions and uses of the foods peppered throughout the book. Italy is a small country, but the cuisine is very different depending on the different regions. And there is a mind-boggling array of recipes here. I was in search of a particular cookie I had been given to sample by my Italian language teacher...I have looked everywhere for it without success. I did find it here. What I also like, in comparison to The Silver Spoon is that the recipes here are much more decriptive. There are no photographs, so you'll need to use your imagination. But the selection of recipes is very impressive.

While I am not 100% satisfied, this is a great concoction of recipes organized in a new way. What I'm missing is at least some yummy images (there is absolutely none of any kind) and an alphabetical index in addition to the 2 provided. As is, there an index by region and another by main ingredient, but if you're after just something italian, you can't simply go to an index in an alphabetical order. I'm in a process of compiling my own as it is going to be invaluable.

As a big plus, with a ton of recipes there is no BS included, just plain, concise description of ingredients and how it goes together. But it also means that this is not for a beginning cook, yet I think everyone can't count on finding a cooking inspiration here.

I love the fresh layout as well. This is just about as different as it gets in cookbooks.
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As a side note: another reviewer cannot find classic "bolognese sauce" I can't either, which only adds to my above point of the need for an alphabetical index. I actually don't think there is "bolognese" in this one. While considered by many a classic, it has been the most bastardized meat sauce in culinary history. As such it may no longer fall within the fine Italian cuisine category. I'm just guessing here, but truth be told someone ought to go to jail for letting this sauce become a sour point of Italian cuisine

I don't cook very much anymore. I purchased this boo0k for my Grand Daughter for Christmas. She loves the recipes. I have been the recipient of two wonderful meals already, so I think the book is a hit. She has looked at the hundreds of recipes and has meals planned for many of them already.

Please don't hit negative feedback because my review isn't so positive. With this book I would urge you to do more research before you buy. Some will like it, but others will not like it.

This 900 page book, without pictures, is targeted towards a niche that really is interested in regional Italian cuisine. And I'm not talking about the reader that loves Tuscan or Sicilian food. This book isn't teaching you about regional cuisine. The recipes are ordered in categories: antipasti, pasta, fish, vegetables, etc. and not per region. The book was originally written in 2003 for an Italian audience. I am not at all familiar with the organisation that have produced the book. Sounds a bit like a "fake" organisation.

Since the regional origin of each recipe is just listed adjacent to the recipe, you don't really learn anything about what characterize the different regions. What you get is around 2,000 regional recipes, presumably this covers a lot of all Italian cooking. Nothing more, nothing less. Very many of the recipes are very simple, like stuffed mullet, pasta with mint, etc. I wonder why these have been included and how their provenance would have been determined. I think many of the recipes are just added to increase the number of pages. The number of ingredients in each recipe is quite low, maybe five on average. The book has a very narrow target audience and I would rate it with three stars. The book is not bad, but don't expect to find hidden regional gems of recipes. They might exist in the book, but they would very much be hidden among all the other recipes. The book is absolutely not bad, but it is targeted to a niche audience. I just want to be clear about this if you decide to buy the book. (Three stars for me is a good book for a small niche audience. If you don't belong to the niche, you will probably experience the book as two stars.)

This is the cookbook that covers it all in Italian cooking.It's easy to follow and is a no nonsense book. If you REALLY want to cook italian this is it!!.

La Cucina is great. No photos other than a very useful map with regions. I would have like to seen a few photos, the book is timeless it is maybe the most in depth Italian cookbook I have come across yet. They have provided two index columns, the region index is just as useful as the "principal ingredient" index.

I was born in Italy and I lived there for many years,so I know a lot of recipes in this book,but it has a lot of new advises for me......
This book is very helpful because it is easy to read and to follow the instructions......

It has not only very concise recipes but a history of each recipe and where it came from.

The book is a fantastic tomb for a wide variety of Italian cooking. It is thicker than most phone books.

However -- I soon realized that the cover on my book (the hardcover, not the dust jacket) was upside-down. This certainly was not a deal breaker, but it was a little embarrassing considering that I bought the book as a gift.