Customer Reviews

Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen

5 star:		(55)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wow, what a great Italian cookbook, the best I have seen-ever.
The directions are fantastic, if you follow everything she says you will make the most unbelieveable tasting dishes, you almost feel high from the flavors you can create with this book. You will not want to, nor will you have to go out to dinner. There are tons of recipes that I have always wanted to make - chicken scaprellio, fried mozzarella, calzones, every scallopine dish ever, grilled and marinated calamari. All these and so much more are in this book. So far (in the past week) I have tried;
Calzones, Gnocchi, Tomato sauce, Ravioli with spinach, Chicken scallopine with peppers, mushroom and tomato, Chicken breast in a light lemon-herb sauce (was like an oreganto), stuffed artichokes. Every dish was like a dream, I can't wait until I can prepare new recipes. Nothing is too heavy, the oil amounts are perfect, not too rich, or too weak. Can't say enough good things about it, just buy it and you will see!

Every so often a cookbook comes along with recipes that not only inspire the reader, but also provide such logical yet intuitive preparations that he or she can envision the final product. As an Italian American who has taken up the heritage of reproducing my grandmother's great dishes, this book not only has recipes that I remember from my childhood, but many that I still make today. Sunday Pasta Dinner with pork in the gravy? It's there. Bracciole and meatballs--the best I've ever made. I just finished a bowl of Pasta e Fagiole-- my grandmother's recipe--and it's in this book.
To sum up: forget writing out all those family recipes to pass on to your children. Buy them the book and annotate it personally. You can't do better than this.

If you've ever been to Felidia and seen and spoken even a brief hello to Lidia Bastianich you'll know you need to own ALL of her books. This wonderful third book of hers brings you back to your days (in my case Forest Hills, Queens) when stuffed mushrooms, baked clams, and lasagna were heaven on earth to you and wonderful weekly as well as weekend feasts. Just reading the recipes and you know they will turn out exactly the way the should. Follow them to Italian enchantment. Read all about Lidia and her life. It, like her recipes are down to earth and passionate. Beside food, Lidia extols all the wonders of family gathering, working together, making life delicious. You can just picture her on the wagon going to market when she was little. She was imbued with the wonders of food, its delights, and preparation from the time she was very young so it is no wonder all of her recipes are so enjoyable and accurate you don't know which to start with first. Start with the first one and just go on until you have made the last one. You will have not only read and followed an entire book, you will have made it a permanent part of your life. Thank you Lidia. I anxiously await the next one.

Everyone knows that Lidia Bastianich knows Italian cuisine, but is this new cookbook of hers something you would want to have in your Italian cookbook collection? This cookbook was created from her popular television show, and in it Lidia shares the type of recipes she first found when arriving in America as a young woman. The recipes are pretty typical of basic Italian American cuisine, and you will find such standards as "Rigatoni alla Boscaiola", and "Bistecca alla Pizzaiola" throughout the book. I did not find any recipe in this book that I have not heard of before, although some were prepared a little differently than I am used to.

Almost all of these recipes would be right at home on my Italian Mother-In-Law's kitchen table, and could easily be reproduced by a cook with minimal experience. Peppered throughout the book are instructions with photographs of some basic kitchen skills that a novice cook would find very helpful. The photographs, although not plentiful enough for my taste are very attractive and will cause you to start planning your next Italian meal. Something I did find in this book was that all ingredients listed would be available to everyone which was not so in Lidia's previous books. In my opinion, although I did not find anything new or unique in Lidia's new book, if you enjoy Italian American food than this is one of the best references you will find available at this time.

I am an Italian American who grew up helping my mother cook. While I was a professional chef for many years and have maintained my interest in food after I moved on to a non-cooking career, I lost my touch with the foods of my youth. Lidia has given all my childhood memories back to me and then some.

The recipes are authentic because they turn out perfectly and they taste like I remember them. Best of all is their utter simplicity. Lidia's talent comes from combining a few very fresh ingredients using proper technique into a mouth watering dish.

Anyone who has seen the show knows the passion that Lidia has for food. Just watching her enjoy the dish she has prepared can make you hungry. Well, this passion spills over to the book in every recipe and in every description or cooks note in the book.

If you love Italian American food and want to get as close to authentic as you can get, then buy this book.

This is the best Italian cookbook I have.It is worth its weight in gold. I could never make good spagetti and meatballs. Now, thanks to Lidia's easy to follow directions, I am making wonderful Italian dishes. My husband says my meatballs are the best he has ever had. I can't wait to try all the other recipes. If you love Italian food but can't get the hang of it, this is the book for you. Thanks Lidia!

A friend of mine gave me this cookbook with the caveat that I make dinner the next weekend based on it. Since everyone hangs around while I cook, I made one long cooking time dish as an appetizer for the vultures to eat while I put together the rest of the meal.

I made 4 dishes from the book. The first one was the pork spareribs with honey vinegar glaze. That was the dish I made for the pre-dinner nibbles. Excellent. When everyone first tried it there was that silence one only hears where the only sound is everyone chewing and all conversation has stopped.

The shrimp pieces in a scampi sauce over toasted bread was the formal appetizer. Everyone said, I should have made it the dinner with some pasta and were disappointed that there weren't any extras. Raves all around. The sauce is the scampi sauce that you wish you would get when you go out to the local Italian place, not too much garlic, not too much lemon and a unbroken butter sauce wtih chives. Very easy to make.

Scallopine Piccatta (chicken for those who would not eat the veal dish below). Again, a full bodied bright lemon-butter flavor without the garlic and chive notes of the scampi. Excellent egg flavor batter, you actually appear to poach the meat in the fat. It was enjoyed by everyone. Very easy to make.

Scallopine Saltimboca (veal) An delightful presentation of veal with proscuitto and whole sage leaves in a white wine, and stock sauce mounted with butter. No leftovers to be had, great contrasts in flavors. Lidia gives a wonderful technique to attach the proscuitto and sage leaves to the scallopine. I was able to not use toothpicks to hold the 'sandwich' together when I put the sage leaves under the proscuitto (as suggested). I think however, that one or two sage leaves would need to be added to the sauce to give it the same taste as when the sage is on top of the proscuitto.

4 recipes and 4 hits. Yes, I know that 3 are similar dishes, I don't have an cooking assistant and wanted to limit the ingredients and cooking times. My only caution are the following things. My friends' stove is not commercial grade or even very high BTU, 7,000 I think on what her burners describe as 'high-speed.' Lidia's instructions also require that any stocks to be added to a dish be at temperature, that is at least at a simmer or low boil which most people do not do (just open that can of Swanson or College Inn, I believe). I found that if you don't at the least have the stock at temperature, you can not finish the dishes in the times quoted in the book. The sauces are full of flavor, but you are reducing CUPS of stock and wine. The sauces will simply not reduce to the right thickness in a few minutes unless you get the time savings from the heated stock (and get yourself a ladle that measures a 1/2 cup as an aid). Luckily the meats were sitting on the side (after being sauted) while the sauces were reducing so no big deal. The shrimp dish was almost overcooked because the sauce didn't reduce fast enough (I was forced to remove the shrimp to let the sauce reduce and then add them back in). First glance at some of the recipes appear to have a lot of fat, such as in the scallopine dishes, the saute of the meat is in a lot of fat, but that is tossed out to make the sauces which have less with 4-6 tablespoons of butter divided among the 6-8 servings that most of the recipes are setup for; perfect for a gathering or a large family.

If you have ever seen the PBS TV series that goes with this book, you will know most of the additional storyline and dialog included, a very good read with excellent tasty recipes.

I just can't say enough about this book and how much it's changed my cooking style. To anyone familiar with Lidia's PBS show, you know already that she is a culinary treasure. But for those of you who are not familiar with Lidia and just want a wonderful cookbook devoid of hard-to-find and rarely used ingredients, look no more.

One of Lidia's basic concepts is that cooking be an inspiring experience and that you enjoy what you are doing and appreciate the simple ingredients that make delicious meals. I have found that after following several recipes, I have become a better, more thoughtful cook, no matter what I'm making. And that is what she truly wants (I met her at a booksigning a year ago and had the honor of speaking with her about this).

One suggestion: Purchase one of those plexi-glass cookbook holder/protectors, because trust me - you will be using this quite a lot.

To the best of my knowledge, there is not an ounce of Italian blood in my veins but my love for Italian food is endless. This book is by far one of the best Italian recipe books I have come across in ages. Mind you, not all the recipes are one hundred percent genuine Italian, some are American adaptations, such as the spaghetti and meatballs. This version would not likely be found in any restaurant in Italy but it is still a terrific recipe. My favourite recipes tried so far are the Lobster fra Diavolo with Spaghetti and the San Martino Pear and Chocolate Tart, which is soooo Heavenly it will just knock your socks off and take your mind to a whole other place!

Most of these recipes taste the way Italian food should, like authentic recipes actually prepared in the Old Country. There are also some nice coloured photographs here, although more in colour and less in black and white would have added to the quality of the book. Overall, the book is still deserving of a five star rating for the excellent content.

This third book from Lidia Bastianich has at least two things going for you can see from the dust jacket alone. First, it's from a PBS television series, which means the recipes were clearly worked over by a platoon of prep chefs and culinary producers, so the instructions are well exercized. Second, it's a winner of an IACP Cookbook award. They don't give these to just any compilation of recipes. A third clue that this book will be something special is that it's editor at Knopf is Judith Jones, the most celebrated cookbook editor of the last several decades, having begun her career by editing Julia Child's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. The last clue that this promises to be a rewarding book is that it is published by Knopf, my all time favorite American publisher which has an unsurpassed attention to the details of laying out an attractive book without the need for glitzy rotogravure.

As anyone who has spent any time watching Mario Batali on TV knows, Italian American food is different from Italian cuisine. Since there is a rather large industry of culinary journalists and chefs describing the true Italian regional cuisines, it's only fair that the Italian American derivatives be celebrated on their own merits.

Ms. Bastianich will not, however, be limiting herself strictly to Italian American hybrids. Some dishes are her own creations and some are purely Italian which never acquired an `American accent'.

The chapter headings in the book are:
Antipasti

Soups
Pasta & Risotto
Pizza
Entrees
Contorni (Side Dishes)
Desserts and Coffee

I am happy to see there is no space dedicated to the extensive subject of Italian breads except for the brief chapter on Pizza, as this is a subject requiring a great attention to detail which would detract from the primary object of the book. I am also happy that no space or expense was devoted to wine pairings. While this is a worthy subject, I would rather know that all my money is going for quality recipes.

As Ms. Bastianich came from northern Italy (actually Istria, ceded to Yugoslavia at the end of World War II) and the great majority of immigrants from Italy to America came from southern Italy, the book ends up with a fairly balanced reflection of Italian cuisine as a whole.

One of the signal features of Italian American cooking is the mixing of meat with southern Italian tomato pasta dishes, as in Sugo di Carne and Spaghetti and meatballs. Of course, meat sauces are not unknown in Italy. Northern Italy has the Sugo alla Bolognese. In fact, Italian appears to have a special work, `sugo' for meat sauces to distinguish them from meatless sauces such as `salsa marinara' and `salsa di pomodoro'.

Another signal feature of Italian American cooking is the apotheosis of garlic, which is used with even greater abandon than in the Italian south. Where Italians typically slice raw garlic, so you can easily skirt around it if you wish to keep a sweet breath, Americans are known to crush the daylights out of the cloves, making it's taste stronger and harder to avoid.

The book includes two very nicely done color photograph sections. Photos of food are free of the annoying out of focus closeups found elsewhere. There are good black and white photos demonstrating selected techniques, clearly being performed by the author herself. Photographs of family are endearing, clear, and well captioned.

I have cooked several recipes in this book and find them all delicious. Not all are easy and some may require some practice, but then, try to construct a mortise and tendon joint entirely from the directions in a book on carpentry.

This is true comfort food. Highly recommended.