Customer Reviews

Molto Italiano: 327 Simple Italian Recipes to Cook at Home

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

`Molto Italiano' is Food Network icon Mario Batali's fourth and, to my lights, best cookbook to date. Like Mario, it has a very nice heft to it, advertising 327 recipes in an utterly simple organization in 450 easy to read pages with a built-in ribbon bookmark, something I think should be a required feature on all cookbooks. For all of those clamoring to buy Giada De Laurentiis' cookbook, I would recommend you pass that up for this book, which is far better.

Mario states that his cooking, and these recipes, are all based on Italian home cooking and repeats his often stated belief that in Italy, no one thinks the best cooking is done in restaurantes. Everyone believes the best cooking is done at their aunt's house or Nonna's house or at the house of the matriarch living down the street above the market. No one goes to a restaurant to get superior meals; they simply go to celebrate so Mama and Nonna don't have to cook. I have been hearing this claim for years on `Molto Mario', and it finally dawned on me the implication this has for all the Italian restaurant cookbooks out there, including Mario's own `Babbo Cookbook'. In strong contrast to cooking in `the F country' where an important difference is made between `haute cuisine' (Paul Bocuse, Joel Robuchon, et al), `cuisine bourgeoisie' ' (Julia Child, Richard Olney) and `cuisine provincial' (Elizabeth David, Patricia Wells), Italy has its regional home cooking and approximations to it done in restaurante, trattoria, osteria, and enotecas.

I am really happy to see this book devoted almost exclusively to RECIPES. There is a five page essay by David Lynch on Italian wines after the introduction and there is a one page list of recommended kitchen equipment at the end of the book (Please add food mill to list, as it is used in the potato gnocchi recipe. This is actually more useful than a potato ricer, as it can do more different things.). There is also two-page list of suppliers at the end of the book, but that's about it. The contents and relative size of the chapters accurately reflects Mario's mantra about the relative importance of various types of food in the Italian cuisine. Meat appears in almost every chapter as the base of a sauce or as a condiment, but it is less important as a main dish. The chapters are:

Antipasto, by far the largest chapter at 106 pages, divided into sections on vegetable, seafood, and meat dishes. This section is so large that this book can easily replace most books specializing in antipasti.
Soup, Rice, and Polenta takes 38 pages with 29 recipes, including all the most familiar dishes such as Roman egg drop soup, Tuscan cabbage and bean soup, saffron risotto, and polenta with clams.
Dried Pasta gets 24 pages with 20 recipes. For me, the most important recipe here is Mario's version of spaghetti alla carbonara, wherein he does not break the egg yolks, but leaves that to the diner to enhance the sauce by breaking the yolks. I learned this dish on `Molto Mario', and have been frustrated at everyone else's recipe which whips the yolks together with the white before mixing with the pasta.
Fresh Pasta chapter is over twice as long with 34 recipes, including a basic pasta dough and several gnocchi recipes. As Mario did his apprenticeship in Emilia-Romagna, where fresh pasta is much more common than the southern dry pasta, this is understandable.
Fish is understandably a major chapter at 48 pages and 31 recipes, including calamari, shrimp, crabs, snails, sardines, bass, sole, snapper, mullet, salt cod, monkfish, eel, tuna, swordfish, and mackerel.
Fowl is slightly smaller at 38 pages and 27 recipes with 10 chicken, 6 turkey, 5 duck, and 6 game bird recipes. This includes some classics such as hunter's style chicken and turkey meatballs.
Meat occupies a sizable chapter, at 54 pages and 40 recipes, including several of my favorites such as veal Marsala, sausage and broccoli rabe, stuffed meat loaf, and two recipes for calves liver. Yum.
Vegetables also get an appropriately sizable chapter with 34 pages and 34 recipes, including some with Mario's favorite ingredient, Guanciale (Note: Dean and Delucca in Greenwich Village carries Guanciale).
Sweets are in the last chapter of 42 pages and 32 recipes with items from the Austrian influenced Alps to Sicily. Mario goes so far as to recant his claim that Italians do not eat many sweets, revising his story to say that they don't eat many sweets at the end of big meals. Instead, they pack away the sugar with nibbles throughout the day.

Lots of familiar Italian dishes such as frittatas are here, but Mario doesn't waste precious room on bread that has been covered so well in other books.

While Mario gives the Italian name for each and every recipe, the recipe names in the various section tables of contents are all in English. Even those names which have become well known such as `cacciatore' are given as `hunter's style'. Italian is reserved for the recipes' subtitles. This makes the book especially good for first timers to Italian cuisine.

The recent book to which Mario's work is most closely comparable is Michele Scicolone's `1000 Italian Recipes'. I compared several recipes in the two books and, for various reasons almost always preferred Mario's version. In the veal Marsala, for example, Mario sautés in olive oil and uses butter as a final flavoring rather than sauteeing in hot butter. Both more practical and more authentic. In the potato gnocchi recipe, Mario gives much more delicate instructions for combining the riced potato, flour, and egg. Mario also starts off with less flour per potato, leaving the finishing amount of flour to the discretion of the cook.

This is my new first choice among Italian cookbooks for non-foodies. The recipes are all relatively simple, but with no compromises. For Mario fans, put this under your pillow at night. Very Highly Recommended.

If you love to cook and eat Italian food this is the book for you!

To put this review into perspective for you, it is written by a serious student of cooking that has been actively studying food on their own for 25 years. I have been focusing on Italian food for the last 10 years. My favorite cookbook is "The Professional Chef" by the Culinary Institute of America.

Each trip my husband and I take to Italy we find new dishes to love that we want to recreate at home. With Mario's book you can bring your vacation home to your own kitchen. His directions are extremely easy to follow, dare I say they appear to be foolproof.

My husband loves to look at the glossy pictures in the book and pick out dinner. If you like to see pictures of the finished dishes this book has plenty of pictures to satisfy that desire.

I use this cookbook on a weekly basis and have been pleased with every recipe that I have tried. Mario's recipe for Osso Buco (page 363) is worth the price of the book alone. My husband loves the Chocolate Hazelnut fritters (page 477). I believe that there is something for everyone in this book.

If you are looking to expand your Italian cookbook library, take a look at the "Harry's Bar Cookbook". It is written by the owner of the famous bar in Venice, and is a fabulous addition to any cookbook library for those that love authentic Italian food.

You cannot go wrong with this book if you love serious Italian food. This is one of the most used books in my cookbook collection. Even with 500 cookbooks to choose from I frequently find myself reaching for this book. Unlike other cookbooks, this one obviously had all its recipes tested many times. I have made more than 50% of the recipes in this book and everyone has turned out well. Kudos to Mario for a fantastic effort and an exceptional end result.

i guess you could say calling this "simple italian recipes" could be a bit misleading. going into this expecting 300 recipes that you can whip up in 15 minutes with $10 worth of ingredients from a run of the mill supermarket could leave you a bit disappointed.

the first thing you need to know is that batali is fanatical about quality. this means that while some of these recipes may not call for a laundry list of ingredients, getting the quality he's looking for is going to cost you either time, money or both. for instance, he's not telling you to buy the $2 can of 4c grated cheese - it's the $15 a pound stuff imported from italy. and when it's time for a special cut of meat, you need to be prepared to make a trip to a butcher. depending on what part of the country you live in, some traditional ingredients could occasionally be hard to come by, so be prepared.

the second thing you may want to know is that if you're expecting a lot of traditional italian-american style dishes, this book doesn't have them. for the most part these recipes are straight from different parts of italy, unaltered unless stated otherwise. if you're not familiar with what constitutes different types of authentic regional italian cuisine, it would make sense to read through some of the recipes to decide whether or not this book is really going to give you what you want.

these 'warnings' aside, this book is amazing for several reasons. first, the aforementioned commitment to quality and effort that batali is so hung up on. in a society where quick fix foods are replacing any semblence of respectable authentic cuisine, batali's call to arms on this subject runs a lot deeper than your local grocery store. it's a call to a different way of life. you could say he comes off as a bit of a snob, but i think that would be inaccurate. he clearly has a passion for the art of italian cuisine, and almost begs the reader to share that passion with him.

with regards to the physical book itself, i have no real complaints. there are many useful photographs of the dishes - not all of them - but i wouldn't say it's lacking. the layout is logical and easy to negotiate. batali adds on plenty of little asides to mention things that are important to specific ingredients - like how to select a good eggplant or how to make sure your octopus isn't rubbery (boil it with a cork!).

and last but not least, the food. what can i really say here? the recipes are authentic, delicious and most of all inspiring. they make you want to make them - especially the simplest recipes. and this is where the beauty of these dishes shows through - the simplicity of the ingredients. with the exception of a few things that have many ingredients, batali tends to send you to the store to buy five or so items that you can turn into an authentic dish that lets you appreciate the flavors of the ingredients you bought. and since you bought only the best as i mentioned earlier, it tastes pretty darn good.

this book requires that you give in order to get back. incorporating this way of cooking into your life will most likely mean you have to change the way you do some things. change the way you shop. change how much time you get to watch tv at the end of the day. change how much time you spend in the kitchen. but something tells me these tradeoffs will be worth your while at the end of the day.

great book. recommended.

Batali is one of our premier USA chefs, not only due to his FoodNetwork Fame with shows and Iron Chef fame now. Also due to his previous three excellent cookbooks. Primarily due to his passion for the food and sharing it with us!

Here that is crescendoed with his offering us a collection of his favorites collected not only from Italy but also here in US and from TV and his home experimentation.

To me, reading the Intro is the very best part of any good cookbook and Batali is one of the best to read. Here one learns of what the following recipe collection will be about and how to best experience what the chef would want for us.

He begs us to spend more time on shopping, and this statement says it well: "Ninety percent of the success of your meal has already been determined when the food has been packed into your car at the grocery store or farmers' market." How true one learns, so shop for the best in your area!

Further he makes the case well for home cooking becoming the pinnacle of our dining experiences as well, not dining out at restuarants. The coming together to share great food and wine is his goal and he achieves it. He begins with Italian wine primer by David Lynch, which is well done.

Nearly 500 pages of recipes packed with info about ingredient, technique and serving suggests are here, along with interspersed gorgeous color photos. Try some of these: Cauliflower Pancakes;Savory Chestnut Custard; Pancetta-Wrapped Racicchio; Onion Soup Emilia-Romagna Style; St.John's Eve Pasta; Baked Pasta with Ricotta and Ham; Tortellini in Broth; Jumbo Shrimp Marsala Housewife-Style; Bream in a Package; Swordfish Paillards with Leeks and Grapefruit; Game Hens with Pomegranate; Veal Rolls with Lemon and Mushrooms; Eggplant Caponata (jazzed up version of classic); Grilled Marinated Chanterelles; Grandma's Pine Nut and Ricotta Tart; Chocolate Hazelnut Fritters; Roasted Pears with Chocolate.

Besides this wealth and breadth of recipes from all the normal menu categories there is a nice glossary, source listing along with well done sidebar discussions e.g. pasta making, etc.

If you're into luscious, simple Italian cuisine at its heights, this is it! Considering, start with this one and you'll stay with it.

This is an enormous book of recipes with a broad mix of regional and even microregional dishes. I ordered the book after realizing that my wife and I have about 6 months until we head off to Italy on vacation. I've watched and enjoyed Mario's Food Channel show, Molto Mario!, and decided that the best way to truly experience the trip would be to try a few recipes out.

I've noticed that other reviewers have complained about the scarcity of ingredients, but I've found no problem hunting down all but the most obscure ingredients here in suburban San Diego County. And Mario suggests worthy substitutes for ingredients in many of the recipes (you don't REALLY need Porcini mushrooms for the soup, button mushrooms will do).

Truth is, I'm not going to make 90% of the dishes in the book, but my curiousity of the regional dishes and the knowledge gained by leafing through the recipes will serve me well when I dine at Italian restaurants.

The book is huge, with well written (and concise) recipes, and beautiful photography. Mario writes a nice introduction for each food type (for example, wet pasta, complete with methods, ingredients, and variations).

This book is one of the pillars of my cookbook collection.

It's cool that in a cookbook subtitled "Simple Italian Recipes to Cook at Home," you'll find recipes for homemade pork sausage, homemade duck sausage, homemade rabbit sausage, braised rabbit (two ways), stuffed turkey neck, barbecued goat, sweet-and-sour boar, and venison goulash (the last three on consecutive pages). Mario is the kind of guy who milks grass-fed goats at dawn and kills wild boar with his teeth.

But there are some simple recipes. The Cheese Bread from Genoa is a gorgeous bread that requires only a two-hour rise. The Grilled Mozzarella Sandwiches call for heavy cream, fresh-ground nutmeg, and thyme, but they're easy to make if you've got the ingredients on hand. And there's Baked Ziti, though you'll need to make your own béchamel sauce. Plus a good number of fairly simple pasta and gnocchi recipes, too, even Carbonara.

There's one thing to be aware of if you're not an adventurous eater -- Mario has a serious anchovy fetish. He puts it in pasta, in soups, on bread, in salads, and in sauces. He brushes his teeth with it and flosses with the bones. (The index entry for anchovies covers two columns -- more even than the sausage entry.) I guess the point is, once you put an anchovy in your mouth, there's no going back.

I disagree with the reviewers who call this an Italian cookbook for beginners and non-foodies. This is Mario Batali, not Betty Crocker. This book is for people who (at least vicariously) want to share his no-compromise passion for food.

I got this book for Father's day last year and we've been cooking out of it every week since. Batali's recipes are simple - typically no more than two to four main ingredients each - and require standard kinds of prep, like dicing onions and parsley or simmering a sauce. There's not a lot of work to do, if you know how to let go and allow things to brown. The recipes are close to no-fail, and everything has been delicious. The deserts are excellent too.

I've learned as much as I can about cooking Italian food since my oldest daughter was born, studying everything from details anthropological studies of Italian cuisine to massive hotel cookbooks. The cuisine is simple and tasty, with easy-to-find ingredients, and there's so much regional variation I can cover virtually every dietary preference or season. This is a perfect addition to my library. First, its easy to use. Second, and more important, it makes the variations in regional cuisine clear without being heavy on the pedantry. Northern Italian cooking is heavy on the meat and the butter, for example, except for the Friuli area, but the further south you go the lighter the food, the more emphasis on tomato, fish and olive oil. You can find recipes in this book that match those variations, and its easy enough to translate that into menus that match seasonal or personal preferences. Its a good book to get kids involved with too: the recipes are simple enough that my three-year-old can be involved from start to finish.

Two quibbles, which I find in almost every modern cookbook I look at, including the good ones. First, there's no wine recommendations. Some of the regional dishes taste so much better with the matching wine (and Batali certainly knows which, given wine importing is one of his sidelines) that I'm often left wondering what would work, aside from the obvious. Second, there's no menus - there's the primi/secondi-contorni/dolce distinction, for sure, but no suggested sequences. What are his service suggestions? Maybe I have to go to one of his restaurants to get that level of detail, but the book would become a thorough classic - on the level of Olney's books - if he included some wine suggestions and possible menus.

But all in all, you can mine this book for dinner parties and Tuesday nights alike for years.

The recipes in this book are not only tasty, they are perfect for those nights when you're not sure what to make and relatively budget-friendly. I find that most of them draw on items that are already staples, so I don't feel that I am going out of my way to get ingredients that won't be used, with few exceptions (saffron? really, Mario...). The book also includes helpful little sections for reference, such as the doneness temperatures for various meats. I really like to have this sort of support when venturing out into things I wouldn't normally prepare. What I really delight in are the bits that tell you how to do things like make your own guanciale, though until I get a bigger fridge I'd rather just order from Salumi.

I've put the word "misleading" in my review because I agree with others who note that this book is not a presentation of everyday meals. Batali likely has access to ingredients that the at-home, everyday cook does not. From where I write, in Tucson, Arizona, it's not as easy to just step out and pick-up calf tongues to make "Sweet-And-Sour Calf's Tongue" (pg. 116), as well as numerous other specialty recipes. Nevertheless, Batali is clear in calling this book your muse (pg., 14), and this is precisely what he goes on to do-- inspire our creative juices. This is wonderfully magnificent cookbook by a man and brand that is at the top of its game.

I own Batali's "Simple Italian Food" (which I keep meaning to sell, because its recipes are too clunky and its design totally unappealing) as well as the Babbo Cookbook (which I find gorgeous and inspiring but too high-end for anything but show-stopper dinner party dishes -- the oxtail ragu being the notable exception).

Having cooked out of this book almost every week for 6 months now, I think Molto Italiano is the best of Batali's cookbooks. It's well-designed, the recipes work well and taste great, and it doesn't seem the least bit dumbed-down for the Food TV cadre. I'm also a sucker for the bookmark ribbon bound into the spine.