For those of us not lucky enough to grow up in our Sicilian grandmother's kitchen in Little Italy, this lively book is the next best thing--a vibrant collection of authentic Italian family recipes and memories related with warmth and humor by Francesca Romina. Interspersed with more than 150 recipes are antique family photographs and charming tales about the adventures, trials, and exploits of Francesca's extended family and friends, as well as tales from the old country. Her grandmother's favorite pizza recipe recalls the origins of pizza parlors in Chicago, while her savory fava and pea soup takes us all the way back to her native village in Sicily. The dishes are often simple, but with the distinctive touches only generations of tradition can create. These are tried-and-true recipes for genuine comfort foods, accompanied by invaluable cooking advice passed down from one master cook to the next. Picturesque turn-of-the-century Little Italy comes boldly to life in this wonderful memoir-cookbook.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Mangia, Little Italy! is both a valuable book and a frustrating book. It's valuable for preserving a singular style of cooking, that of the small-town Sicilian cook from early in the century dropped into the Little Italy of New York--an experience repeated all over the nation in one Little Italy or another during the great wave of 20th-century immigration. Where some ingredients were never available, or seldom available, back in Italy--mozzarella, for example, or a plethora of seafood--in Little Italy they were there for the haggling. And as a result, Italian American home cooking changed from all that it was back home to some of what it could be in the New World. This book captures that, and you can put the results on your own table.
The book is frustrating because the tales of the family--of Grandma--while intended to be charming, need the hand of a skilled writer. Francesca Romina is a skilled cook and a skilled cooking teacher. She is not a skilled writer. It throws off the focus of the book, trying to be too many things (personal history, cookbook, food history, urban narrative, family history), and not all of them are accomplished with the same attention to quality.
That said, you'd be a fool not to have a go at the seven-hour Sunday Tomato Sauce, the Pizza with Salted Sardines, the Sicilian Meatloaf, the Fried Mushrooms with Lemon and Garlic, the Sesame Seed Biscuits, or Concetta Di Palo's Ricotta Cheesecake. Romina's careful collection of Italian American home cooking turns up some wonderful dishes you may not have encountered before.
"Eat, Little Italy!" is the exhortation of the title, and that seems the best advice. --Schuyler Ingle
Review
Scented with garlic and oregano, the traditional Sicilian red sauce, a long-cooked tomato-based staple, gives heat and life to many of the recipes recollected here. Romina, a cooking teacher who spent childhood weekends in her grandmother's kitchen in New York City's Little Italy, recalls family members and stories while recreating tastes of family meals. Chapters ("Brodo e Ova, Soup and Eggs"; "Carni e Galline, Meats and Poultry") include high-spirited, sometimes tiresomely so, dialogues that Romina recalls having with her Italian-born grandmother. There are recipes for Seven-Hour Sunday Tomato Sauce, which is to be cooked on Saturday and enjoyed during the afternoon-long family meal on Sunday, and a shorter (two hour) version: Weekday Tomato Sauce. Both are made with meatballs and pork. Fish recipes include sautéed Sweet and Sour Tuna and the peasant-style, Christmas-eve tradition, Baccalà. Salted Cod in Tomato Sauce with Black Olives. Though many of these recipes require patience and time (the cod is soaked in cold water for two to three days, changing the water three times a day), several dishes can be prepared with surprising ease, e.g., Veal Pizzaiola, breaded veal cutlets baked in a tomato and onion mixture for about 25 minutes. Plenty of smart tips (include the flavor-packed top of the stem when chopping flat parsley; don't stick your head in the oven to check on roasting chickpeas, which pop in the heat) add extra punch to this exuberant volume.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally Grandma's Italian Cooking is Back,
By A Customer
This review is from: Mangia, Little Italy!: Secrets from a Sicilian Family Kitchen (Paperback)
After so many copies of Italian books that I've thrown out, this one works. It was recommended to me by several professional cooking teachers. I made the Cassata cake, the mother or all Sicilian cakes, and it was fantasik. Romina's 7-Hour Sunday Sauce is the best I've ever made. The family went crazy with the results. I even found pizzas here I have only heard about, such as "Sicilian Christmas Pizzas" stuffed with pork and spinach, and Salted Sardine pizzas. These recipes are impossible to find, and they all worked. I also made her Lemon Cakes which has that homemade taste in the crust topped with cinnamon that I remember Grandma making. This is a book you can read for folktales or cook with. That is rare. I particularly loved the author's tips called "Secrets of Success" on the side of the pages, it helps to make cooking easier. So if you want to make an authentic Lasanga the way it was at the turn of the century or a real Sicilian pizza, the way it's made in Sicily, this is the only book that I've found that is the real thing. Bravo Francesca Romina!
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Book you'll use over and over!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Mangia, Little Italy!: Secrets from a Sicilian Family Kitchen (Paperback)
This book brings the Sicilian Kitchen to every home. It's a style of cooking that is rare in my area of the country, but memories of Sausage & Peppers and fried meatballs on Sunday made my childhood complete. Some of the items here I've never even seen in print before. A little slice of Grandma's house teeming with garlic!
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The first true history of Little Italy Foods and Folktales,
By fromina@earthlink.net (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mangia, Little Italy!: Secrets from a Sicilian Family Kitchen (Paperback)
Hi, I'm Francesca and writing Mangia, Little Italy! was quite a feat, because I had to deal with my grandma Josephina who didn't want her recipes revealed. To me, she's the best cook and storyteller in the world. Each chapter of my book begins with how food was bought and made in Sicily 100 years ago today, and how it was bought and made when Grandma arrived in New York's Little Italy in 1922. For example, I explain that the first ices were only made in the winter in Sicly when snow was available, by pouring fruit syrups over them, and ice cream was only available at the local pastry store -- these foods were never made in the home, since there was no refrigeration. In Little Italy, the first snow fall was anxiously awaited so children could once again collect snow off the firescape and make ices. Now this is known as snow cones... there's some history for you. I also included wonderful tales from the past, such as The Curse of the Woman in the Red Dress, and Chickens that Turn into Gold, a wonderful fairytale that is still believed. If you'd like to know the history of lasanga, and it's original name, and make dishes like Lasagna with a 7-Hour Meat Tomato Sauce, you'll enjoy my book. The old days of Little Italy will hopefully come alive for you. Francesca Romina
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
