Italian Pure & Simple: Robust & Rustic Home Cooking for Every Day [Hardcover]

Clifford A. Wright (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1998

Simplicity and resourcefulness. Italian Pure and Simple is born out of the farm cooking of Italy-food that satisfies and is made from what is on hand or affordable. These are dishes with the rough, ready flavors of the outdoors -- Baked Thyme Chicken with Roasted Potatoes and Fried Peppers, Tomato and Gorgonzola Salad, Pork Chops and Golden Onions. Pasta plays a big part in this book, seventy-nine recipes in all, a lip-smacking selection, no matter what you're in the mood for: Fettuccine with Ham and Warm Goat Cheese; Penne with Chickpeas and Mint; Lasagne with Chicken, Spinach, and Portobello Mushrooms; Linguine with Garlicky Fried Oysters.

Enjoy your vegetables as a side dish, like Drowned Mustard Greens and Summertime Broccoli, or eat it like crostini -- Roasted Country Bread with Ricotta and Spinach or with Ripe Tomatoes and Basil. And desserts are the soul of simplicity -- Strawberries and Grapes in Syrup with Mint and Vanilla, and Mango in Lime Syrup.

One hundred and fifty recipes in all, Italian Pure and Simple willsatisfy your hunger, easily and deliciously.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Clifford Wright thinks you should enjoy good Italian home cooking every day. This single father of three children sets out to prove how easily you can do this in Italian Pure & Simple. Most of Wright's recipes, from pastas to frittate to quick sautés, make his point well. His Summertime Broccoli, steamed florets drizzled with lemon juice and olive oil, and Easy Lentil Minestrone--nothing more than red lentils and pasta simmered in chicken broth and graced with grated Parmesan cheese--are, indeed, authentic, delicious, and a breeze to make. Spezzatino of Chicken (a light stew), Spaghetti with Fennel, and Linguini with Salmon don't require much more effort. They are perfect examples of piatti unici, one-platter meals Wright says are typical Italian weekday cooking.

This kind of food demands quality ingredients. Wright explains in detail what these are and where you can find them. Often, it is at the supermarket, even if you live outside a major city, or in the kind of local specialty-food stores that carry a growing number of Italian products.

The recipes provide enough detail to make this book a good choice for someone just setting up housekeeping. --Dana Jacobi

From Library Journal

The author of Grill Italian (LJ 2/15/96) presents more of the recipes he cooks for family and friends, the majority of them pasta dishes, although there is a chapter on antipasti and "other little foods" and some other light main courses. These are casual dishes, often more Italian in spirit than strictly authentic; the headnotes and sidebars, however, include lots of information on Italian cooking and ingredients. Italian cookbooks abound, but if you can use another "quick and easy" one, Wright's offers a nice assortment of recipes.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Cookbooks; 1st edition (February 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688153062
• ISBN-13: 978-0688153069
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 8.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,432,502 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Clifford A. Wright is a cook, food writer, and independent research scholar who won the James Beard/KitchenAid Cookbook of the Year award and the James Beard Award for the Best Writing on Food in 2000 for A Mediterranean Feast (William Morrow). His book A Mediterranean Feast was also a finalist for the cookbook of the year award given by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. He is the author of fourteen other books, twelve of which are cookbooks, including his latest The Best Soups in the World (Wiley, 2010). Colman Andrews, former editor of Saveur magazine called Wright 'the reigning English-speaking expert on the cuisines and culinary culture of the Mediterranean--the real Mediterranean, the whole Mediterranean.' Clifford writes regularly for Saveur, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Fine Cooking, and Food and Wine and wrote all the food entries for Columbia University's Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East. Clifford has also lectured on food at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Georgetown University, and the Culinary Institute of America among other universities and venues. As a cooking teacher he has taught cooking classes at the Rhode Island School of Design, Sur la Table, Central Market in Texas and other cooking schools around the United States and Italy.
Before writing about food, Clifford was a foreign policy researcher at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., a Staff Fellow at the Institute of Arab Studies, Belmont, MA, the Executive Director of the American Middle East Peace Research Institute, Cambridge, MA and the publisher of Raising Kids, a child development newsletter for parents. He was written two books on the politics and history in the Middle East.
You can visit him at www.cliffordawright.com and read his food writing at www.zesterdaily.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Useful and delicious recipes!, February 9, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Italian Pure & Simple: Robust & Rustic Home Cooking for Every Day (Hardcover)

I've always wanted to know how to make sophisticated Italian cooking look simple, and now I can. Thanks to Clifford Wright's new book I can whip up Mediterranean delights that approach the dishes in some of my favorite restaurants, and do it at home without spending all afternoon preparing. There's nothing esoteric here. Just as the title promises this is basic, down-home food.But Italian down-home, so it takes a little getting used to. There are combinations I've never tried before, and ingredients from Italian delis that I don't usually buy. But the recipes look perfectly do-able and promise a nice change from the usual pasta and red sauce.