Good & Garlicky, Thick & Hearty, Soul-Satisfying, More-Than-Minestrone Italian Soup Cookbook [Paperback]

Joe Famularo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 1997

After seeking out the best soups from family, friends, and restaurants through every region of Italy, award-winning cookbook author Joe Famularo presents 150 enticing, unexpected, exuberantly flavorful recipes. Here are tasty soups for every appetite and every season. Cold-weather comfort is as close as Abruzzi Chickpea and Chestnut Soup. And casual warm-weather lunches and suppers are more tempting with a tureen of Zuppa di Primavera ("soup of springtime"). And for anytime: Five-Fish Soup from Livorno or Garlicky Mussels in Broth.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Both Famularo and Wasserman-Miller stress the regional nature of Italian soups, and both include dozens of traditional recipes for minestre and minestrone, brodo, and zuppe. But Famularo, who grew up in a large Italian-American household, has a more personal approach, while Wasserman-Miller, who fell in love with Italy on her first visit there and later opened a Boston food shop called Formaggio, takes a somewhat more formal one, with more explanations of basic techniques and culinary background. Famularo includes many fondly remembered family recipes as well as favorites from his travels to Italy; Wasserman-Miller's collection seems a bit more wide-ranging, featuring some less well-known recipes along with the classics. Although there is some overlap here, of course, the two authors' approaches and interpretations of the traditional recipes are different enough to make both these books worth adding to most collections; they're also good companions to Margaret and G. Franco Ramagnoli's Zuppa! (LJ 12/96).
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

After a zealous soup quest across the length and breadth of Italy, Joe Famularo presents 150 Italian soups for every occasion and mood. There are soups to start a meal and soups to make a meal. Humble soups, born of necessity during leaner times, and the inventive soups of professional chefs. Seasonal soups, regional soups, family soups. Vegetable soups and pasta soups, fish soups and meat soups, bean soups and rice soups.

But behind the great variety of soups are the qualities found in all true Italian cooking-simplicity, integrity, ingenuity, and the use of only the best ingredients. A fat bunch of spring's first asparagus, lightly cooked and then added to a broth of arborio rice, creates an incomparable Sauteed Asparagus Soup. Glistening fresh fish, angel hair pasta, and two handfuls of peas, is transformed into minestra di pesce con piselli e capelli d'angelo-a dazzling fish soup from Liguria on the Italian Riviera.

Other soups, like the minestrones, reveal yet another side of Italian cuisine-its marvelous regional character. In mountainous Abruzzi, pork is used as a flavor base while fresh fennel and mint make it indescribably lush. Romans, meanwhile, favor a minestrone founded on beef and beef broth, red beans and red wine. The Milanese add rice to theirs, the Genovese pesto and pasta, and the Calabrians give an unexpected flourish to a tomato- and garlic-based minestrone with a shower of slivered yellow peppers.

Delicious, naturally healthy, and with a depth of flavor that satisfies right down to the bones, Italian soups nourish body and soul. And from basic brodo (broth) to meal-in-a-pot minestrone, Joe Famularo serves them up.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Workman Publishing Company (January 12, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761101470
• ISBN-13: 978-0761101475
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 7.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #170,282 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #91 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Meals > Soups & Stews

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rich and Hearty Italian Soups!!!!, June 19, 2001

By 

Teantae Turner "sistert" (Columbia, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Good & Garlicky, Thick & Hearty, Soul-Satisfying, More-Than-Minestrone Italian Soup Cookbook (Hardcover)

Any excuse to buy another soup cookbook is a good one for me. The large words "Italian Soup" written across the cover was all it took for this one to end up in my shopping bag. Recipes range from amazingly simple to time consuming but worth the work. These are recipes that you'd expect to have passed down lovingly, with each recipient making it their own along the way.

There are no pictures in this cookbook but the descriptions do the recipes justice all on their own. Each recipe is listed by its English name, its Italian name shown underneath. Chapter titles, listed English over Italian, appear only in Italian on each page header. For visuals, a decorative green strip borders the page edges and there are drawings done in orange interspersed throughout. A very well done index is also provided at the end of the cookbook.

The "Sautéed Asparagus Soup" is a super simple soup that contains so few ingredients you wonder how it could possibly be any good. But it is! I found myself making it whenever I was short on time and ideas. Like most soups, it reheats well and tastes even better the next day. For the most part, soups contained here can be made in under an hour (after preparation of ingredients).

"Pasta and Beans with Fennel and Sausage" is great when company's coming and you don't want to have to fix a lot of food. A nice salad served along side this rich and filling soup and you'll elicit compliments and requests for seconds.

Soup is typical considered a great food for dieters though with these recipes, I would suggest going over the ingredients lists carefully. Many ask for a good helping of cheese in or on top of. Some use bread, rice, or potatoes as thickeners, the meat-based soups use fairly fatty meats, and butter is used most often to cook in.

If you are looking for meal type soups, miss your grandmother's Old Country cooking, or just enjoy soups like I do, this is a not to be missed cookbook. You can turn to any page and feel comfortable that the results will be fantastic.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A downright miracle, February 10, 2002

By 

Ernest Joselovitz (Rockville, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Good & Garlicky, Thick & Hearty, Soul-Satisfying, More-Than-Minestrone Italian Soup Cookbook (Paperback)

I'm not a cook. But during winter months especially, I do make a few soups to help in the household. And this book is the one I usually use as my guide. I need a recipe. I need recipes that are foolproof. And here is where I get them. Not only does every recipe end in a soup that is edible, but one that is tasty and repeatable. That, with this "cook", is downright miraculous! There is variety here, a learning experience, and in the end a soup that is invariably a tasty success. And I'm not even Italian.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dazzling, January 25, 2002

By 

Westley (Stuck in my head) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Good & Garlicky, Thick & Hearty, Soul-Satisfying, More-Than-Minestrone Italian Soup Cookbook (Paperback)

This collection is one of my favorite soup cook books (I have over 20). The recipes are outstanding and the variety is great. Who knew that there are so many different recipes for minestrone? This cook book is the type I love to just pick up and read, and the author includes many warm vignettes or his family memories associated with these recipes. Unfortunately, though, there are no pictures of these excellent soups.