Italian Farmhouse Cookbook (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: green germ, gently packed, chestnut pasta, Simple Dough, Nunzio's Tomato Sauce, Maria Maurillo (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

For the third book in her farmhouse series, Loomis traveled all over Italy, meeting and talking with vintners, cheese makers, olive growers, balsamic vinegar makers, and farmers, gathering delicious recipes and picking up invaluable culinary secrets, or segretos. There are Stuffed Sage Leaves from Tuscany, Lush Tomato Salad from Sicily, Pasta with Fava Beans and Basil from Liguria, Braised Artichokes from the Amalfi peninsula, and more. Thoughtful wine suggestions are included with many recipes, and there are dozens of boxes and sidebars about the people Loomis met and all sorts of other topics. Lynne Rosetto Kasper explored some of this same territory in The Italian Country Table (Scribner, 1999)Din fact, some of the same people are mentioned in both booksDand Loomis, whose ties are more to France, lacks Kasper's authority on the subject; however, she ventured farther afield than Kasper and her recipes represent a greater range of Italy's regional cooking. With its 200 simple but mouthwatering recipes, readable and informative text, and charming illustrations, her book is highly recommended.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...[recipes] are representative of the soul of Italian home cooking and are already favorites in my house..." -- Bon Appetit

"The recipes are clear and easy to follow, and they deliver excellent, honest food." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"This book simply oozes fresh, flavorful foods from Itlay's countryside. It's part cookbook, part travel stories..." -- Nashville Tennesean

"Tour the vast culinary landscapes of Italy...Chock-full of unpretentious, simple recipes...perfect for anyone who loves Italian fare and lore." -- New York Newsday

"When it comes to recipes, Ms. Loomis delivers....I have a dozen pages marked with recipes I want to try out." -- The Wall Street Journal

"When she's talking about the farmers, Italian Farmhouse shines." -- LA Times

"[Italian Farmhouse] is a book to pick up when you are dreaming of a mini-escape to Italy." -- Associated Press, August 2000

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Workman Publishing Company (January 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761105271
• ISBN-13: 978-0761105275
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #346,295 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Foodie Read on Italian Country Cuisine, November 24, 2004

By	B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The `Italian Farmhouse Cookbook' by Susan Hermann Loomis is part of a three (3) book series of farmhouse recipe books covering France and the US as well as Italy. My first and most important caution to the prospective buyer is that if all you want is a book of Italian recipes, there are easily a hundred or more books that would better fill that need. Ms. Loomis books are very good, but they are as much or more for readers and foodies as they are for cooks. At least a third of the text in this book gives background on Italian farmers, their life, and their produce. A second reason for this caution is based on an observation I saw in `The Medieval Kitchen' which points out that in the 15th century, city cooking was much more interesting than country cooking, as major urban trading centers had both access to foreign products and a nobility which encouraged creative cooking. Lest you think much has probably changed in the last 500 years, Ms. Loomis' book itself states that Italian country cooking was, until very recently, limited by poor roads and limited trade.

This is not to say this is not a good book. In fact, for travelers who may have an interest in visiting rural Italy, it is an excellent book. It is also excellent in giving a picture of rural agriculture in Italy over the last 100 years. It is quite surprising how recently the Italian peasant has been freed from a crippling economic serfdom by both the national Italian government and the European Economic Community centered in Brussels. All sorts of things that new foodies assume have been around for centuries such as fine Italian wines, dried pasta, high quality olive oil, and grappa comparable to French cognac are actually very recent developments. One can easily get the wrong impression from the age of other products such as Parmesano-Reggiano and prosciutto de Parma that Italy has always been the culinary dynamo it is today.

I must say the recipes in this book are very good and very typically Italian. The surest symptom of an Italian style recipe is when one wonders that you need a recipe at all to make the dish. Just as I marvel at the utter simplicity of Italian influenced recipes from London's River Café and Jamie Oliver, most of the recipes in this book are based on simplicity itself. Even better, there is very little use of premium ingredients such as truffles and balsamic vinegar. On the other hand, I am a little puzzled at how few recipes there are featuring wild mushrooms and wild greens such as dandelion and nettles. There are a fair number of recipes for game such as guinea hens and wild boar. This is great for the accuracy of the book's picture of Italian rural cuisine, but it does not add a lot to the count of recipes useable by a foodie in suburban Newark.

I am especially pleased that the book covers the full range of Italian regions from Friuli to Sicily to Sardinia. I am especially pleased to see a recipe for the traditional Sardinian flatbread. This recipe plus a few others may be worth the price of admission, as it is an easy preparation that requires no fussing with yeast or any other leaveners.

The subjects of the recipe chapters follow a very traditional Italian model based on courses. The chapter titles are:

Appetizers and Snacks, including sidebars on Buffalo mozzarella and Italian organic farming.
Salads, including sidebars on Balsamic Vinegar and capers.
Soups, both Minestre and zuppa.
First Courses, including sidebars on Parmigiano-Reggiano and rice farming.
Second courses, primarily lamb, pork, poultry, rabbit, and boar.
The Vegetable Garden, including sidebars on grappa, organic farming, and peppers.
From the Bread Oven. Not a lot, as the Italians, like the French, typically bought bread from the baker.
Sweet, Sweet, with fruit, nut cakes, fruit tarts, and marmalades.
The Pantry, or what to keep on hand to whip up fast meals.
The basics, or how to make brodo and doughs.

This is the kind of cookbook you read in bed at night to better understand a major world cuisine and get ideas for improvisations based on the Italian style of cooking. The paperback is simply not up to the rigors of standing open on the kitchen table.

This is an excellent background book to accompany more systematic treatments of Italian cuisine such as the excellent books by Marcella Hazan, Lydia Bastianich, and Giuliano Bugialli.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW!!!, September 9, 2000

By	Nick Schlag (Colorado) - See all my reviews

Recently, I acquired Susan Loomis' new cook book Italian Farmhouse Cooking. One day, on a boring Sunday afternoon, I was sitting at the dining room table thinking. Directly in front of me was this wonderful cookbook. I picked it up, having nothing better to do, and began to flip through the pages. The more I read, the more intrigued I became. Not only did it have new, unique foods that I had never even could have fathomed could be made so easily; it had interesting stories of the famous Italian culture. As I sat there, reading the short essays, I got the feeling that I had been put into Italy, enjoying food and culture with all of them. I rode the train up the mountain, and I tasted the wonderful taste of great antipastos and such. This book is certainly a must buy for all enthusiastic cookers, for true cooking cannot be found in the recipe; it can only be found in the culture.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Country Style Italian Cookbook, November 1, 2000

By	Deb Mele (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

If you are interested in "real" Italian food from the farmhouses or peasant kitchens around Italy you will find this cookbook a great reference tool. It is evident that Susan Herrmann Loomis spent a great deal of time researching the recipes and culinary history while writing this book. As the Italian Food Host at BellaOnline and an avid cookbook collector of anything related to Italian cuisine, I would highly recommend this book for someone collecting Italian cookbooks. If it were your first Italian cookbook however I would encourage you to do more research. The one glaring negative of this book was that it did not have a single food photo. I can't imagine that in this day and age that publishers have not figured out that great food photos sell cookbooks!