Sicilian Home Cooking: Family Recipes from Gangivecchio [Hardcover]

Wanda Tornabene (Author), Giovanna Tornabene (Author), Michele Evans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 24, 2001

"To know and be close to your family, nothing is more important than dining together at home, as often as possible, on delicious home cooking. Salute!"
--Wanda Tornabene, from the Introduction

Four years after winning the 1997 James Beard Award for Best Italian Cookbook, Wanda Tornabene and her daughter, Giovanna, return with a glorious second helping of homestyle recipes. Sicilian Home Cooking offers more charming stories and rustic, delicious dishes from the kitchen of Gangivecchio, the Tornabenes magnificent thirteenth-century abbey in Sicily's Madonie Mountains.

As in the award-winning La Cucina Siciliana di Gangivecchio, here you'll find a wonderful array of simple, mouthwatering recipes for antipasti, soups, pasta, rice, meat, fish, vegetables, salads, and desserts including easy and delicious variations on bruschetta, the hearty Fagioli e Festoncini di Nonna Elena (Granny Elena's Bean and Pasta Soup), enticing entrees like Cotolette di Vitello di Wanda (Wanda's Veal Cutlets) and Gamberi in Crosta alla Gangivecchio (Gangivecchio's Shrimp en Croute), and sublime desserts like Cartocci (Fried Pastry Coils with Ricotta Cream) and Gelo di Caffe (Coffee Gelatine).

Sicilian Home Cooking also offers some tempting new sections. Egg Dishes showcases this essential ingredient in beautiful frittatas. Pizza and Focaccia is a salute to these most Italian of breads, adorned with fresh toppings. The section on couscous teaches the traditional method for this Arab speciality, which Sicilians have adopted as their own. Wines and Liqueurs gives recipes for homemade, refreshing libations, including the Italian favorite, Limoncello.

The homestyle recipes are nothing short of fantastic; but what makes this book even more special is that Wanda and Giovanna welcome you not only into their kitchen but also into their lives at Gangivecchio. In stories rich with the fragrant atmosphere of the gorgeous Sicilian countryside, they share memories of the annual grape harvest, a special Christmas snowstorm, and an illicit childhood trip on a commercial fishing boat. They describe favorite local restaurants and dishes from the past and the present. And they tell funny and touching stories of relatives, friends, and pets; both old and new.

Sicilian Home Cooking is a cookbook and much more; a true slice of Sicilian life.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Wanda and Giovanna Tornabene run a restaurant in Gangivecchio, their 600-year-old family home in Sicily. This is their second cookbook, and it focuses on home cooking, Sicilian style. Italians are well known for their generous hospitality, and the Tornabene women are great ambassadors. Through dozens of personal stories, some funny, some sad, they invite you into their home to sit at their kitchen table while they reminisce, gossip, educate, and feed you some of the most enjoyable comfort food and conversation you've ever experienced.

Wanda was born in Palermo but has lived in Sicily for more than 50 years. She learned to cook from her mother-in-law and passed those lessons down to her daughter. She admits that she was reluctant to share her secret family recipes, but has found great joy and pleasure in doing so. The conversation in the Tornabene home wanders from nutty old Aunt Elvira who collected bus-ticket stubs and used matches to Eggs Poached in Fresh Tomato Sauce. Granny Elena's Bean and Pasta Soup warms the soul, and the naughty escapades of Ciccio, one of Gangivecchio's dogs, will make you laugh. Aromatic Risotto with Gorgonzola and Fennel may be dinner the night you read about Felice, the little lamb who was allowed into bed after he was bathed, but Wanda's Veal Cutlets served with a flavorful sauce made with garlic, onions, tomatoes, and a dash of cayenne will still make your mouth water. Stories of parties with family and friends entice you to make Sicilian-style pizzas topped with four cheeses, zucchini, and thyme or potatoes, sausage, and rosemary, or maybe you'll treat the crowd to "Midnight Spaghetti" variations like Spaghetti with Garlic, Oil, and Hot Pepper or Ruote with Radicchio and Gorgonzola. Sicilian sweets like Ricotta Tart with Nuts and drinks like Strawberry Liqueur round out the menu and ensure that you'll be back to visit with the Tornabene women of Gangivecchio again and again. --Leora Y. Bloom

From Publishers Weekly

With this long-awaited follow-up to their James Beard Award-winning La Cucina Siciliana di Gangivecchio, the mother-and-daughter team triumphantly continues to re-create the hearty, rustic home cuisine served at their restaurant in a 13th-century abbey in the Sicilian mountains. As before, the fare is ravishingly seductive, and much of it enticingly simple. A host of antipasti includes Hot Eggplant Sandwiches and Lettuce Tart made with a dough enriched with eggs and a bit of vanilla. Although they rarely serve egg dishes in their restaurant, the Tornabenes aver that no Sicilian home cook could do without Eggs Poached in Fresh Tomato Sauce, and Pizza with Potatoes, Sausage and Rosemary or one of its many relations is a standard Sunday night treat for mother and daughter. They celebrate pasta with such creations as Paolo's Pennette with Fresh Figs and Pancetta. For more substantial courses, the Tornabenes bring forth Sicilian Oven-Braised Veal Shanks, Chicken Souffl‚ and Gangivecchio's Shrimp en Croute. Vegetable side dishes range from Fried Stuffed Cardoons to the fragrant Baked Potatoes with Bay Leaves, and to conclude are the waist-threatening Almond Parfait and Chocolate and Cheese Tart with Cinnamon, which can be enjoyed with one of their homemade dessert wines. (May 1)Forecast: With the strength of the authors' first book and a seven-city nationwide tour, this work's basic yet lovely fare will make it a credible contender among the crowded shelves of Italian cookbooks.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (April 24, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037540399X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375403996
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 1 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #849,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of nice, useful and easy to prepare recipes., September 17, 2004

By 

Sophie (astoria, ny) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sicilian Home Cooking: Family Recipes from Gangivecchio (Hardcover)

There are great vegetable "recipes" (really no more than a few lines)using mint, anchovy, etc. that will give you a flair for Sicilian cooking: asparagus, potato and mushroom cake, cauliflower pizza, fennel and artichoke salad, cucumber and caper salad, white bean salad. The pasta recipes are also nice, slightly different takes on what most people have already had: fettucine carbonara with vegetables, lemon spaghtetti, ruote with radicchio and gorgonzola, fettucine with yellow peppers, and about a dozen more. I think the appetizers are the best part: sicilian sweet and sour meatballs(don't think pink), bruschetta with swordfish and mint, caponata, artichoke tart with sardines and ricotta (I think its similar to the american artichoke and mayonaisse recipe going around), olive marinades, gorgonzola and pear tart. Good book, but yes, you need to have some experience in the kitchen to know when they've left some steps out. For instance the preparation of artichokes requires baby artichokes. Some dishes are very heavy, like baked eggs with bechamel sauce. You have to know what will be appropriate to serve as an appetizer, etc. Chicken's probably easiest prepared by using bone-in, skin-on pieces rather than cutting up a whole chicken. But there's a lot of inspiration and a lot to learn from these women. I definitely think it's worth buying if you know your way around a kitchen, regardless of what cuisine you're most familiar with.

48 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy-to-use, entertaining cookbook with yummy recipes, August 21, 2001

By 

Kate McMurry "Young Adult Author" (United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Sicilian Home Cooking: Family Recipes from Gangivecchio (Hardcover)

The authors, Wanda Tornabene and her daughter, Giovanna Tornabene, are co-owners of Gangivecchio, a restaurant housed in a thirteenth-century abbey in Sicily's Madonie Mountains. In addition to providing scrumptious, authentic Sicilian recipes, this cookbook is great fun to read, because these two world-class chefs also offer many funny stories of their colorful relatives, friends and pets.

Their detailed table of contents, thorough index, and menu plans guide you easily through the book, and the recipes are divided into these convenient sections: appetizers, soups, egg dishes, pizza and focaccia, pasta, couscous, rice, meat main-course dishes, fish and seafood main-course dishes, vegetables, salads, desserts, wines and liqueurs.

I, personally, am on a high-protein diet, and one might wonder what someone like me could possibly get from a cookbook whose recipes all hail from the land of pasta. Actually, quite a lot. The vegetable, meat and seafood dishes are delicious, low-carb, and not horribly time consuming to make. And it is crucial on a special diet to, as much as possible, find things that taste good to eat our you won't stay on it. All of these recipes are packed with flavor. Here are some examples of my personal favorites from the vegetable-dishes section: Syracuse-Style Peppers (olive oil, salt, mint leaves, garlic, and vinegar for seasoning), Country-Style Eggplant (olive oil, vinegar, oregano, mint, and hot pepper flakes for seasoning), Gangi-Style Artichokes (onions, green olives, capers, celery hearts, vinegar, and pepper for seasoning).

In addition, even those of us on a high-protein diet can occasionally have bread. And, as for me, if I am going to indulge, I much prefer to eat really great bread, such as the terrific focaccia in this cookbook. The authors furnish a basic focaccia dough recipe from which you can spring off into many variations such as broccoli focaccia, focaccia with onions and tomatoes, spinach focaccia, and focaccia stuffed with arugula, sun-dried tomatoes and/or cheese.

I highly recommend this cookbook for inexperienced as well as seasoned cooks, whether cooking for themselves alone, or for their families and friends. If you love Italian cooking, you'll adore these Sicilian recipes!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than just a cookbook, October 7, 2010

By 

Patricia B Murtagh (TORRINGTON, CT, US) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Sicilian Home Cooking: Family Recipes from Gangivecchio (Hardcover)

Not only are the recipes excellent and easy to follow, but the additional information about the Gangivecchio family and Italy and Sicily is wonderful.