Customer Reviews

Italian Food (Penguin Classics)

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While this book on it's own does not complete a cooks library of Italian Cuisine, on the other hand, it does contain the proper approach to the myteries, simpicities and charm of Italian food, all on it's own. The descriptions are very thourough due to it's 1950's audience who may have never heard of Risotto, Gorgonzola, Prosciutto, Gelato, or even olive oil for that matter! However, she writes so comfortably and calm that you can almost picture her leaning against the stovetop. Her book is better than probably 90% of what is out today. Since the cuisine hasn't changed (much), this book is even more useful today than the 1950's, because, now we can taste the ingredients she writes so lovingly about. I often find myself looking up something and end up wandering through other musings she weaves. The artwork is great too, I especially love the painting of The Pasta Eater.

ITALIAN FOOD by Elizabeth David, combined with the works of Waverly Root, Carlo Middione, and Anna Tasca Lanza should be enough to grant anyone Italian citizenship (or at least drooling for it).

`Italian Food' is one of the three major books Elizabeth David wrote in the first five years of her culinary writing career, the other two being `French Provincial Cooking' and her first, `Mediterranean Food'. The titles of two of these three books, being about `Food' and not strictly about `Cooking' is very telling of the fact that Ms. David's major books on food are simply not like any other writer of her generation.

For starters, it is a mistake to see Ms. David as `the English Julia Child'. While Julia Child was possibly the most outstanding teacher of cooking methods writing in English, Ms. David was the most distinguished scholar of English, French, and Italian cooking methods and cuisine. The hallmark of that difference was that while Julia Child reworked and expanded traditional recipes so that no detail was left to chance for the amateur American cook, Ms. David goes to equal lengths to describe exactly how Italians really cook, down to the marked inexactness of their measuring.

Unlike all the great modern writers in English on Italian cuisine such as Marcella Hazan, Giuliano Bugialli, and Lydia Bastianich, Ms. David not only gives us a survey of Italian ingredients, recipes, and methods, she gives us a critique of them as well. Can you possibly imagine Marcella Hazan saying that the Italians generally do not cook eggs very well?

Note that Ms. David is as rigorous about her giving the correct Italian names to things as the very best of the Italian writers, but unlike the Italians, she is really seeing Italian cooking through French colored glasses. Today, we commonly think, for example, of a frittata as a distinct type of dish. Ms. David translates `frittata' into `omelet'. Her description of the technique is perfect, something even Mario Batali would be proud to quote, but he may object to the interpretation of the dish as seen by `the F country'.

The importance of Ms. David's achievement, which required a full year's research in Italy, can only be appreciated when you realize that she was working in a climate of opinion in England which saw Italian cuisine as very dull, being nothing more than variations on pasta and veal. As we are well aware today, Ms. David found an enormous wealth of regional diversity in ingredients, methods, and even language, as the same pasta shape can be called three or four different names in different parts of the country.

Since this is a critical and analytical look at Italian cooking, it is done by type of dish rather than by region. And, the book is not intended to be a `complete' survey of Italian dishes. There are a few well known dishes such as `pasta puttanesca' or `timbales' which are not here, and some, such as `spaghetti alla carbonara' which are found under a slightly different name, `Maccheroni alla carbonara' (which is actually more appropriate, as many types of pasta shapes are done with this eggy preparation).

One of the many things that stand out in this book is how well Ms. David's personality and point of view come out on practically every page. In a recent competition for `The next Food Network Star', the judges stated over and over that the contestants must project who they were while presenting the culinary material. Like her great contemporaries, M.F.K. Fisher and Julia Child, this is certainly one thing which Elizabeth David does to great effect. I was especially pleased when she spoke of her connection to the much older travel writer, Norman Douglas. While Ms. David's biography did not clearly reveal the source of Elizabeth's love of food and food writing, the statements in Ms. David's own `Italian Food' make it clear that the elder Norman Douglas was her primary mentor in establishing her professional interest in food and writing about it at a very high standard.

Ms. David's high standards are evident when you compare her writing with that of Tony May in his recent handbook, `Italian Cuisine' where I found several mistakes in identifying ingredients. While the culinary content was sound, Mr. May, and his publisher's copy editors, had relatively low standards for factual accuracy.

A quick look at the back of `Italian Cooking' confirms the fact that this is more a work of scholarship than of a simple book on cookery. There are appendices of bibliographies on both cooking and tourism and notes on wine. One may need to be a little careful with any references, especially on wine and travel, as much in this area has changed in the last 50 years.

Short of stumbling across an autographed copy of the hardcover edition with the original illustrations, you will want to refer to the revised edition, first published by Penguin Books in 1963, as this edition incorporates most of the footnotes into the main text, as the footnoted material was largely segregated due to the 1954 rationing of food in England.

While Ms. David had several major culinary writing disciples, especially Jane Grigson and Claudia Roden, I believe the only place you will find writing at her level of scholarly criticism is from the leading modern columnists such as John Thorne, Jeffrey Steingarten, and James Villas.

You may not want to cook from this book on a daily basis, but as I have, I believe you can use this as your primary source of Italian recipes, and be all the wiser for choosing this volume.

I've been carrying around my 1969 Penguin editon of Elizabeth David's book for over 30 years. It's now a wreck - it's been used so much! It is absolutely the best book I have read (and used constantly) that describes the art of cooking Italian food. Great descriptions of Italian (including regional) ingredients and really easy to follow practical menus. I was so delighted to learn that a new edition of this marvelous book (first published in 1954!) was available.

This is a new edition of Elizabeth David's 1958 classic. I'm so glad to see it back in print. David's somewhat prolix recipes range in tone from pedantic to stern to confiding--but always interesting and educational. The recipes are heavy for today's cuisine, but they're delicious. I especially rely on her risotto instructions. My favorite recipe is the Cuttlefish Stew.

I have an old Penguin paperback version of this book, in my possession since 1966, held together with duct tape, speckled with with dots of olive oil, pesto and marinara from all these long years of use so it was with great delight that I found this new version on Amazon. It is a standard that I return to again and again for Mrs. David's keen understanding of what makes Italian cusine so superb; impeccable ingredients, careful attention to method and restraint. The recipes from this book taste the most like food I've eaten in Italy because Italian food, while layered with many nuances and flavors is essentially quite simple relying on exquisite freshness and finesse. Elizabeth David brings that lesson home in her wonderfully literate and direct voice sometimes reminding and sometimes demanding what the recipes are expecting from you. As is her wont the book is filled with asides and quotes from Italian writers and thinkers; F.Marinetti, the Italian futurist of the 1930s and Apicius from 30 A.D. and a line like this from Guiseppe Marotta, the Neopolitan writer, who says about spaghetti: "The important thing to remember is to adapt your dish of spaghetti to circumstances and your state of mind". She wins me over with her charming/demanding use of the English language, her dry sense of humor and her obvious love of her subject. Many of the recipes in this book have become part of my repetoire ( Minestra Verde, Budino di Pollo in Brodo, Casoeula, Carote al Marsala & Pesche Ripiene to name a few) while others are simply informative about Italian food and culture. This book, originally published in 1954, holds it's own right now in the 21st century and is a tantalizing and wonderful adventure in cooking and eating. For anyone who enjoys Italy and Italian food this book will give years of service and pleasure.

I bought this book shortly after purchasing her French cooking book. This book, in combination with the above mentioned French book and her Summer Cooking, are THE Elizabeth David books. No one who is serious about fine cuisine should be without these classics. The food is simple and stunning.

I picked this book up at a remainder sale- you know- "crown books" kind of thing- about 15 or 20 years ago. It was in the bin that was being almost given away because there was water damage, so I grabbed it and searched for a clean copy. Couldnt' find one so I bought it- really for the illustrations. It's full of details of kitchens, cooking, scullery maids etc by painters from the 1500's (Pieter Aertsen), 18th centurey (Groewenbroth & Carlo Magini), 14th (Tacuinum Sanitatis), 15th (Abulcasis) and on and on including some gems like Jocapo Ligozzi "Mouse and Walnut" which also depicts a mole, Vincenzo Campi's "The Kitchen" showing a decidedly NOT cuddly cat with entrails from a bird or eel scratching a little setter who is hoping to steal the bits- one that makes the book worthwhile if there was nothing else I liked.

Luckily for my overflowing shelf of cookbooks (that are underutilised due to cries of "Mom, I don't want duck wings!", etc) the book is handy too. The recipes are more like guidelines than recipes- sort of the anti-recipe to those who need full-color illustrations of each and every item in a cookbook in order to consider purchasing the book. The illustrations show what food looked like when the cooks knew what part of the animal it came from. The guidelines are designed for people who were accustomed to using what they had on hand and judging how the food was cooking by how it looked and smelled, not by the clock or timer.

Yes, I love this book- as a cook who substitutes and guesses and makes things up as I go along and make pretty darned good food, despite what my children may think.

If you're looking for quick and easy Italian recipes this is not the book for you, but if you want to sit down on a Sunday morning and read for a couple hours about the magic of Italian cuisine and then go to the farmer's market to get the ingredients to try some of the things you've learned, this is the book for you.

This cookbook was first published in Great Britain in 1954, well before I ever started to cook for myself. I've had my falling-apart, greasy copy since the late '60s. I don't use it much these days simply because Elizabeth David "taught" me everything she could about Italian cooking decades ago. I've been on my own since. But once in a while, I open the thing, being careful to keep the loose pages from falling on the floor, to confirm my memory of a specific dish. I do that when I cook something that doesn't seem quite as good as I recall. Often I find that I've dropped a step or omitted an ingredient, and Elizabeth sets me straight.

There are eight regional recipes for aubergines (eggplant to you, Yank!) in "Italian Food". Fourteen for artichokes, including my favorite 'nostalgia' dish from my years of living in Rome: "carciofi all giudea" - Jewish artichokes, so-called because they were popularized in a restaurant in the Roman ghetto. Five for finocchio (fennel) and seven for lentils, all from different regions of the Italian Peninsula. All good Italian cooking is regional; there is no 'national' cuisine, even today, and one of Elizabeth David's virtues was her deep understanding of regional tastes, based on local products. Amazingly, vegetables, cheeses, types of pasta, etc. that used to be unknown and unavailable to cooks in America, except in neighborhoods of the great immigrant meccas, are now found on the shelves of supermarkets in Montana and Missouri. Recipes in this book that I could only read 30 years ago can now be cooked and savored. Da vero, la vita é dolce!

David doesn't just toss off recipe after recipe, however. She meditates, narrates adventures in the markets, quotes from historical accounts of cookery from all ages of the Italian past. Once in a while she offers a recipe like "Fagiano Futurista" - Futurist Pheasant - borrowed from the Italian artist Marinetti. Happily, she also offers notions about how to make such a recipe practical. Not every recipe will be replicable in an American kitchen; one example is "beccafichi al nido" - Figpeckers in their Nest. The figpecker is a tiny bird, of the sort that used to be common in Italian markets and popular in restaurants. The 'nest' was a large red mushroom collected wild in Liguria. Obviously not a dish to be served to conservation-minded company! However, it gave me the idea of cooking squab (or game hen) with the huge crimini mushrooms called "portobella" in supermarkets, following David's steps for preparation.

There are dozens of Italian cookbooks available now, and Italian cuisine has evolved since 1954, from Liguria to Apulia, but if you want to explore the authentic regional roots of la cocina italiana, Elizabeth David's cookbook masterpiece is the place to start.

This is the book that I turn to if I want no muss, no fuss Italian cooking that gets it right, even though I have others. I got a paperback copy back in the 70s and finally had to give up on it last month--so got a new copy here on Amazon. Other than the cover, everything is just like it was in the 60s, when it first came out. Elizabeth David was a wonderful writer. If you want Italy at home, and don't need fancy photos, this is the book to go to.