Customer Reviews

The Tuscan Year: Life and Food in an Italian Valley

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

 

 

This book is delightfully written and is far more than just a recipe book, although the recipes I have tried so far are first rate. The author paints a gentle, thoughtful and entertaining picture of life in a traditional Tuscan farmhouse. Strong emphasis on use of fresh, seasonal produce and lots of useful tips on how to achieve a genuine taste of Tuscany.

This is a wonderful book that recreates the author's chronicles of a year in Tuscany. It's delightful to read and it brought back memories of the way my Italian grandmother used to cook. The recipes are authentic and I refer to them frequently.

I am sorry to say, but none of the current crop of Tuscan books a la Mayes and the others comes close to "The Tuscan Year". I knew right away that I was busy with a classic : classic in the sense of authentic cooking, but also the writing itself. In short, the very best record of the fabled Tuscan [or Italian for that matter] gusto. The honesty, simplicity, joy and sheer hard work shines through in every page and each recipe is a celebration of this life. PRIMA!

Don't expect this book to be another "Year in Provence" or travel in the Italian wilderness book. Elizabeth Romer documents the reasons the Tuscans -- and their predecessors -- eat like they do, plant like they do and live like they do. It carries us back to Roman times and tries to explain why Tuscans consider somone from the next valley to be a foreigner. A fascinating read for more than just cooks.

A few months ago I reviewed two books on Tuscan life and cuisine, `Ciao Italia in Tuscany' by PBS series host Mary Ann Esposito and `Simply Tuscan' by New York City restaurant chef / owner and curio shop impresario Pino Luongo. Neither book impressed me as giving a genuine picture of life in Tuscany, especially as it was before EuroAmerican homogenization took over. This book, `The Tuscan Year', Life and Food in an Italian Valley' by textile artist and Tuscan resident Elizabeth Romer is the real deal. The venue is an isolated valley in the southeastern corner of Tuscany, genuinely rural in that it is several dozen miles from the large cities of Florence and Sienna. The feeling the author gives about this lovely environment reminds me of the admittedly artificial feeling of lyric isolation from the cares of the world in the very obscure movie `The Hidden Valley' based in an isolated Swiss valley community surrounded by the ravages of the 30 years war.

The major text of the book is in twelve chapters, one for each month of the year, beginning with January and ending with December. There are very few illustrations, limited to a few simple line drawings opening each chapter. The text is divided roughly equally between culinary information and recipes and non-culinary tales of the domestic, agricultural, and animal husbandry. The highest praise I can give this book is that it has a strong kinship in the style and quality of its content to Patience Gray's great culinary journal `Honey from a Weed' which I have been attempting to accurately review for over six months now.

The main characters of the story are not the author and her family, but a native Tuscan family of Orlando and Silvana Cerotti "of the remote mountain area between Cortona and Castiglion Fiorentino. They have a single son and they run their estate and live their lives in a traditional manner. They do this from choice not necessity. Their lives are bounded by the land, which they use to its fullest extent, and in this way they are virtually self-sufficient. Their property is extensive, stretching over 400 hectares, and includes acres of forest and arable land, streams, vineyards, many small houses and their own imposing fattoria with its surrounding walled kitchen garden, olive groves, chapel and outbuildings."

The most enheartening part of this story is the fact that the Cerotti's and their family and farm hands have been successful in maintaining a lifestyle that has the feel of dating back to the Renaissance, if not earlier. This is not a story of an agricultural estate in irreversable decline, although the family has cut back on some farm resources such as the herd of pigs. Rather than maintaining 100 swine, the family buys a pig each year and has it slaughtered and butchered by a professional travelling butcher. All the `charcuterie' is done on the premises by the butcher or the family. The hams are cured by Silvana and hung to dry in the attic. Orlando takes care of sausage making with the butcher.

All the recipes are given `in context' in the month when their ingredients are in season and, where appropriate, in the liturgical season most appropriate for the dish. There are precious few culinary tips in the recipes and all are written in a narrative fashion, with no neat lists of ingredients and careful quantities, well-defined prep instructions, and numbered steps in the preparation. This is as much a book on anthropology as it is on things culinary. That is not to say the recipes cannot be made by an American suburbanite. If you have basic cooking skills and good instincts, you should have no problems with these recipes. Just be sure to read the author's notes on measuring at the end of the book. She is very much the student of Elizabeth David when it comes to weights and measures, using the proper Englishman's teaspoon, tablespoon, soup spoon, and teacup as measuring devices. The author gives some correlations of these devices to our shiny stainless steel measuring devices, but as Ms. Romer points out, Silvana used no measuring devices at all, so if I were you, I would get the lay of the land and proceed to measure things out by the seat of your pants. You will probably get a much more desirable result than if you try to exactly translate the measurements into the metric or something equally precise and irrelevant.

My only reservations about the culinary contents of the book are in the recipes for brodo (stock) and in the absence of a recipe for the salt-free Tuscan bread. The brodo recipe calls for boiling the stock for three hours, which violates absolutely every single stock recipe I have ever read, in that stock ingredients are to be just brought to the edge of a boil, then simmered. Also, the rationale for the saltless Tuscan bread is given in great detail, but there is no recipe for same, and, I suspect you may have a very hard time finding true saltless bread in an American suburb. My local megamart carries a Tuscan loaf, but I will bet more than a few lire (or euros) on the fact that salt was used in the recipe.

This book is first and foremost a delight to read. At the same time it is a valuable scholarly source document for a lifestyle which seems to be disappearing from around the world. Grab onto it and savor it while you can.

Highly recommended to readers and cooks alike.

If you read cookbooks like novels, and sit at your kitchen table with five or so of them sprayed across its expanse, reading histories behind recipes and searching for ideas -- this book is for you. My vast collection of varied and sundry cookbooks is improved exponentially with the addition of "The Tuscan Year."

Filled with month-by-month details of family, farm, food, and life -- this book reads more like a regional family historical novel interspersed with vivid descriptions of food and enchantingly detailed recipes ("one teacup of the best green olive oil," "a dessert spoon of tomato concentrate," "one hen pheasant"...).

If you appreciate Italy for its food, regions, and the joyful, serious people who have made their varied and delicious cuisines beloved around the world, then this book will be one of your favorites year after year.

Life and Food in an Italian Valley (subtitle) is a memoir, cookbook and record of a Tuscan farm family. I found the book to be a better read than Mayes' "Under the Tuscan Sun" for it gives a more comprehensive look at daily family life rather than one person's experiences. The tweleve chapters--January through December--provide the reader a glimspe of the monthly activities of the Cerotti estate offering a look at their lives including their food, work, family and celebrations. Romer gave me a sense of being a part of the Cerotti household for I became engaged with them as if I were a family member. Sitting at Silvana's kitchen table allowed me to learn much about traditional Tuscan food which has been handed down from one generation to the next.

The thing that made me by this book was that it was written in the early 80's - long before countless people started jumping on the Peter Mayle/Frances Mayes bandwagon of writing about living abroad in warmer climes. Elizabeth Romer describes the joys and trials of living in Tuscany throughout the year, covering all the major festivals and occasions and providing numerous recipes from light Summer dishes to hearty, robust meals for the winter nights. Her decsription of the meal prepared for the harvest workers goes on for pages and is one of the most mouth-watering and evocative pieces of 'food literature' I have ever read! There is, however, a slight tendency to patronise the Tuscan locals in that 'simple country folk' manner so unfortunately evident in those who have spent many years living in cities. Luckily, this attitude does not pervade the book, but is nonetheless a little disapointing when encountered.

Romer's writing flags in parts and the descriptive narrative so enjoyable in certain chapters becomes little more than padding until inspiration strikes her again. Her observations on the little things that are whittling away the centuries old practices and customs are poignant and well recorded, and the general tone of the book obviously delights in the many circumstances, characters and stories she portrays.

A good read for those wanting to dream about life in such beautiful surroundings, and a must for anyone wanting to try out genuine Tuscan cooking.

I picked this book up in the Rome airport on my way home from ten days in Italy, thinking this would be a good diversion for the plane ride home. It was not diverting... it made me ravenously hungry.

This reminded me very much of the way people like my grandparents lived: with what is at hand, taking care to prepare for the next season, never thinking that their life is "rustic" or "authentic" or "charming" - it is what it is.

I was especially interested in reading about the neighbors who come and assist in the harvest: while nowadays large farms hire laborers to do this, small vineyards where I live still do it this way: put out the call and then feed those who turn out.

The author has given a romantic tinge to what is by modern standards a very hard way to make a living, but also shows the intangible benefits of this way of life: the warm family relationships, the pride in one's own work, and the comaraderie with neighbors and tradesmen.

And the food: do not read while on a diet! The descriptions of making home-cured sausages, cheese, bread, soups, wine will simply drive you wild with hunger.

This is a sweet and lovely read that depicts a vanishing way of life.

The thing that made me buy this book was that it was written in the early 80's - long before countless people started jumping on the Peter Mayle/Frances Mayes bandwagon of writing about living abroad in warmer climes. Elizabeth Romer describes the joys and trials of living in Tuscany throughout the year, covering all the major festivals and occasions and providing numerous recipes from light Summer dishes to hearty, robust meals for the winter nights. Her decsription of the meal prepared for the harvest workers goes on for pages and is one of the most mouth-watering and evocative pieces of 'food literature' I have ever read! There is, however, a slight tendency to patronise the Tuscan locals in that 'simple country folk' manner so unfortunately evident in those who have spent many years living in cities. Luckily, this attitude does not pervade the book, but is nonetheless a little disapointing when encountered.

Romer's writing flags in parts and the descriptive narrative so enjoyable in certain chapters becomes little more than padding until inspiration strikes her again. Her observations on the little things that are whittling away the centuries old practices and customs are poignant and well recorded, and the general tone of the book obviously delights in the many circumstances, characters and stories she portrays.

A good read for those wanting to dream about life in such beautiful surroundings, and a must for anyone wanting to try out genuine Tuscan cooking.