16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Excellent Foodie Read on Italian Country Cuisine, November 24, 2004
This review is from: Italian Farmhouse Cookbook (Paperback)
The `Italian Farmhouse Cookbook' by Susan Hermann Loomis is part of a three (3) book series of farmhouse recipe books covering France and the US as well as Italy. My first and most important caution to the prospective buyer is that if all you want is a book of Italian recipes, there are easily a hundred or more books that would better fill that need. Ms. Loomis books are very good, but they are as much or more for readers and foodies as they are for cooks. At least a third of the text in this book gives background on Italian farmers, their life, and their produce. A second reason for this caution is based on an observation I saw in `The Medieval Kitchen' which points out that in the 15th century, city cooking was much more interesting than country cooking, as major urban trading centers had both access to foreign products and a nobility which encouraged creative cooking. Lest you think much has probably changed in the last 500 years, Ms. Loomis' book itself states that Italian country cooking was, until very recently, limited by poor roads and limited trade.
This is not to say this is not a good book. In fact, for travelers who may have an interest in visiting rural Italy, it is an excellent book. It is also excellent in giving a picture of rural agriculture in Italy over the last 100 years. It is quite surprising how recently the Italian peasant has been freed from a crippling economic serfdom by both the national Italian government and the European Economic Community centered in Brussels. All sorts of things that new foodies assume have been around for centuries such as fine Italian wines, dried pasta, high quality olive oil, and grappa comparable to French cognac are actually very recent developments. One can easily get the wrong impression from the age of other products such as Parmesano-Reggiano and prosciutto de Parma that Italy has always been the culinary dynamo it is today.
I must say the recipes in this book are very good and very typically Italian. The surest symptom of an Italian style recipe is when one wonders that you need a recipe at all to make the dish. Just as I marvel at the utter simplicity of Italian influenced recipes from London's River Café and Jamie Oliver, most of the recipes in this book are based on simplicity itself. Even better, there is very little use of premium ingredients such as truffles and balsamic vinegar. On the other hand, I am a little puzzled at how few recipes there are featuring wild mushrooms and wild greens such as dandelion and nettles. There are a fair number of recipes for game such as guinea hens and wild boar. This is great for the accuracy of the book's picture of Italian rural cuisine, but it does not add a lot to the count of recipes useable by a foodie in suburban Newark.
I am especially pleased that the book covers the full range of Italian regions from Friuli to Sicily to Sardinia. I am especially pleased to see a recipe for the traditional Sardinian flatbread. This recipe plus a few others may be worth the price of admission, as it is an easy preparation that requires no fussing with yeast or any other leaveners.
The subjects of the recipe chapters follow a very traditional Italian model based on courses. The chapter titles are:
Appetizers and Snacks, including sidebars on Buffalo mozzarella and Italian organic farming.
Salads, including sidebars on Balsamic Vinegar and capers.
Soups, both Minestre and zuppa.
First Courses, including sidebars on Parmigiano-Reggiano and rice farming.
Second courses, primarily lamb, pork, poultry, rabbit, and boar.
The Vegetable Garden, including sidebars on grappa, organic farming, and peppers.
From the Bread Oven. Not a lot, as the Italians, like the French, typically bought bread from the baker.
Sweet, Sweet, with fruit, nut cakes, fruit tarts, and marmalades.
The Pantry, or what to keep on hand to whip up fast meals.
The basics, or how to make brodo and doughs.
This is the kind of cookbook you read in bed at night to better understand a major world cuisine and get ideas for improvisations based on the Italian style of cooking. The paperback is simply not up to the rigors of standing open on the kitchen table.
This is an excellent background book to accompany more systematic treatments of Italian cuisine such as the excellent books by Marcella Hazan, Lydia Bastianich, and Giuliano Bugialli.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
WOW!!!, September 9, 2000
This review is from: Italian Farmhouse Cookbook (Paperback)
Recently, I acquired Susan Loomis' new cook book Italian Farmhouse Cooking. One day, on a boring Sunday afternoon, I was sitting at the dining room table thinking. Directly in front of me was this wonderful cookbook. I picked it up, having nothing better to do, and began to flip through the pages. The more I read, the more intrigued I became. Not only did it have new, unique foods that I had never even could have fathomed could be made so easily; it had interesting stories of the famous Italian culture. As I sat there, reading the short essays, I got the feeling that I had been put into Italy, enjoying food and culture with all of them. I rode the train up the mountain, and I tasted the wonderful taste of great antipastos and such. This book is certainly a must buy for all enthusiastic cookers, for true cooking cannot be found in the recipe; it can only be found in the culture.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If I Were A Green Bean...., May 6, 2004
This review is from: Italian Farmhouse Cookbook (Paperback)
If I were a green bean willing to sacrifice myself for someone's dinner, I'd hope that they read Susan Hermann Loomis' Italian Farmhouse Cookbook and prepared me as 'Green Beans with Tomatoes' with fresh sage, olive oil, and garlic.
We had Loomis' green beans tonight along with 'Chicken with Lemon Rosemary Salt.' Last night we had her 'Red Onion Pizza' which is made with the best homemade pizza dough that I've found anywhere.
If you're looking for a good Italian cookbook with simple recipes and easy prep this is it.
Mark this one KEEPER.
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