Customer Reviews

La Terra Fortunata: The Splendid Food and Wine of Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Italy's Great Undiscovered Region

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`La Terra Fortunata' on the culinary landscape of Friuli-Venezia Giulia by noted writer on Italian food, Fred Plotkin belongs to the ranks of many outstanding books on regional Italian cooking such as `The Splendid Table' by Lynne Rossetto Kaspar, `Naples at Table' by Arthur Schwartz, and `Cooking the Roman Way' by David Downie. Not only does Plotkin give us a superb picture of the cuisine of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, he convinces me that this region easily ranks with Kaspar's Emilia-Romagna as one of the two or three foremost culinary centers in Italy.

There are at least three culinary reasons why this region is interesting. First, it is one of Italy's leading wine-producing regions, with a greater variety of grapes than any other part of this great wine country. Second, it ranks just behind Emilia-Romagna as one of the world's great producers of cured hams, with the procuitto San Daniele equal in quality to that of the more famous Parma hams. Third, it is literally at the crossroads of the Latin, Germanic, and Slavic culinary worlds, as it was once the primary port of the great Austro-Hungarian empire and it's dishes and ingredients show almost as much Germanic and Slavic influence as it does Italian.

One symptom of this multicultural influence is the large number of different recipes there are for gnocchi. While Rome is famous for the potato gnocchi, generally served in Trattoria on Thursdays, Friuli-Venezia Giulia gives us at least eight (8) different gnocchi recipes, some different by only the sauce, but some with different ingredients such as squash, ricotta, and plums. This makes total sense when you consider that gnocchi is halfway between Italian soft pasta and the dumplings and spaetzle of the Austro-Hungarian world. While I have seen recipes for gnocchi with squash and ricotta in other books, this is a first with plums. Although this leads to another highlighted difference from the rest of Italy. In no other region of Italy do I see as many savory recipes with fruits, especially apples, pears, and figs, combined with the `cookie spices' as I do in this book on Friuli-Venezia Giulia. While Sicily is famous for using `cookie spices' due to the North African influence, Trieste and the rest of Friuli-Venezia Giulia was actually as close or closer in contact with Moslem culinary influences when Trieste sat just on the border between Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman empire.

A major symptom of Friuli-Venezia Giulia's cosmopolitan culinary heritage is the fact that olive oil, butter, and pork fat all seem to be used in about the same quantity. There is no strong inclination to use one of the three as there is in southern Italy, Spain, Provence, (olive oil) or northern Europe (butter).

Of all the treatises I have read on Italian regional cooking, this seems to have the best evocation of the region's history and how that history influenced the people, the food, and the wine of the region. While Arthur Schwartz' `Naples at Table' gives a good picture of the history of Campania, Plotkin ties this all together more effectively and does it so well that one can almost sense the romance of the region which lead to its being home to so many notable literary figures such as James Joyce and Italo Sveve (who happened to be p protégé of Joyce as well as his teacher in Italian).

For those of us who really like treatises on regional cooking to be as `authentic' as possible to the language and ingredients of the area, this book pleases us in virtually every regard. The names of all recipes are not in Italian, but in the local Friuli dialect, all, of course with English translation. Where a local non-English name is used, the author always indicates whether the language is Italian, German, a Slavic dialect, or Friuli.

While this cuisine is just a little different from any other Italian (or German) cuisine, it is not inaccessible, as it is a cuisine of poverty which happens to include very common foodstuffs, with emphasis on greens, especially cabbage, lettuces, asparagus, and corn.

Corn, in the form of polenta, is also eminently important in that it is the primary daily starch of the region, edging out even pasta and potatoes.

By contrasting Friuli-Venezia Giulia with other Italian culinary regions, Plotkin dishes out some interesting insights on other parts of Italy. While he concedes that primacy in Italian cuisine goes to Emilia-Romagna with its Parma hams, Parmigiano Reggiano, and balsamic vinegar, he states that the while the cuisine of Campania (Naples) is great, it is not very portable. He also states that while Tuscany leads in reputation, this reputation is based largely on its wines and that the Tuscans are fairly low on the food chain with their doting on beans, spinach, and grilled meats, and not much more. He actually puts Liguria (Genoa) more on a par with Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Emilia-Romagna. This is little surprise, as this region is the subject of his earlier book on regional Italian cuisine.

Other reviewers have taken strong issue with the details of some of Plotkin's recipes. My reading tends to agree that Plotkin is much more the culinary journalist, historian, and geographer than he is the chef / anthropologist such as Paula Wolfert. I have found some recipes where one needs to exercise just a little culinary common sense, as when Plotkin throws fresh parsley into a hot pan with onions and garlic to cook for a few minutes rather than to add the delicate green herb at the end.

With that reservation, I must say that this book's rewards in revealing an `Undiscovered Region' far outweighs a little culinary misstep. While I did not discuss it, the book gives much information on the wines of the region and the major wine producers. I was tickled also to find sources for chairs in the author's appendix on regional ingredient sources. Now I know why Mario Batali gets all his restaurant chairs from Friuli!

Highly recommended.

Fred Plotkin knows Italy, food, unusual combinations -- everything-- especially in this absolutely wonderful book on the Friuli region. Sauerkraut soup infused with smoked pork, panchetta, spices, filled with cranberry beans ( or whatever your favorite choice is), gnocchi filled with butternut squash, veal shin--the meat sooo tender, zucchini seasoned with cinnamon (how fabulous). So many recipes, so little time to make them all but you will. And you will learn much about this region, unlike any other in Italy and using many herbs and spices you would not expect. This is a wonderful homage to Lidia Bastianich who grew up in that area and while her two books on Friuli are incomparable and filled with great recipes, this one will finish the meal beautifully.

Why so many cookbooks these days? One reason is that anyone can troll the Internet for a few hours and download enough recipes to make a book with very little effort; some "authors" apparently do just that. Not, however, Fred Plotkin, who has produced here not a book but a feast that demands the attention of any serious cook or food-lover.

Fred Plotkin's field is Italy--all Italy (as in "Italy for the Gourmet Traveler," which you should order) and the obscure and less-known regions of Italy, as in this book, which is centered on Friuli-Venezia Giulia, high in the northeast, and in his previous one on Liguria (order that too, while you're at it), the superb "Recipes from Paradise: Life and Food on the Italian Riviera (order that, too). These regions--their very existence--will come as a surprise to many Americans, who have been led by decades of relentless and superficial media coverage to believe that Italy is Tuscany and that Tuscany is only the area between Florence and Siena.

Plotkin doesn't strip-mine a region and bung a lot of recipes into a book. He explores and absorbs it. He visits Italy frequently and has often lived there for extended periods, sharing the life of regions that call out to him. In this case, he writes--elegantly, feelingly--of a region he has known for more than 25 years. For this reason, people and places come alive as welcoming presences.

Recipes? There are recipes galore here, and you will be happy (I hope) to know that that are not the tired (and overhyped) Tuscan retreads. With its Adriatic coast, this region was deeply involved in the Spice Trade at its height, and so you will find many spices used here, some of which (cumin, for example) will come as a surprise.

I recommend this book for cold winter days. It'll warm you just to read it, and then you can start cooking too.

Bill Marsano is a James Beard Award-winning writer on wine, spirits and food.

there are problems with the recipes. When the first two recipes I try don't work out I usually give up on the book. The recipe for apple cake with shredded aples etc didn't really work in terms of the proportion of dough to filling for me and the crust had too much of the baking soda or powder (don't have the book with me at the moment) flavor, especially the next day. I started the recipe for butternut squash gnocchi and that seemed off as the squash took much longer to bake and in the fridge there was no draining at all - I cut my losses at that point and did other things with the squash. Then I found a recipe that I had cut out from the NY Times when the book was reviewed for a poppy seed dessert and clearly there is a step missing, also, would the poppy seeds be lightly pounded, pounded to a paste? The NY Times reviewer mentions favorably that the recipes lend themselves to cooking the way a relative would instruct. Well, my mother's "a little bit of this, a little bit of that" instructions frequently do not work and this approach should not be over romanticized. The history of the region section in the beginning is a pleasure.

As Americans living in Italy, my husband & I have used Fred Plotkin's _Italy for the Gourmet Traveller_ as a guidebook when travelling throughout Italy. It has never disappointed us yet. Now we have added this *wonderful* book to our collection. More than a cookbook, this book explores the history and culture of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region (where we, quite luckily, happen to live), as well as the cuisine. There are great explanations of the region's different ingredients, herbs & spices, wines, cheeses, coffee, grappa, as well as travel information and sources for some of the harder-to-find ingredients. And then, of course, there are all of the great recipes, each with an author's note (and usually a wine suggestion)! Now I feel doubly fortunate--to have had the chance to live in this region, and also to have acquired this book so I can re-create a little bit of Friuli when we leave.

Excellent book both descriptive of the country and the cusine. We shall visit Friuli Benezia-Giulia this spring, lured by Fred Plotkin.

Informative book with great recipes and lots of interesting facts about this region of Italy.

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"There is no frigate like a book," the poet wrote, and Fred Plotkin has proved it again. His magnificent new book turns a little-known region into an exotic character, with whom we fall in love, and whose facets are revealed gradually and tenderly by the appreciation and eloquence of the narrator. Thank you, Fred Plotkin, for turning geography into biography.

Any reader who has travelled and enjoyed great Italian food...made by any chef...located any place throughout the world...knows what Italian food ingredients are and how they work together to make a great dish. This book and this chef are such a resource. Put this book in your Amazon shopping cart. If you receive it and it doesn't "pass muster"...return it. Then write your own review. In the meantime, I recommend this to anyone who really enjoys good food.