Flavors of Tuscany (Hardcover)

by Nancy Harmon Jenkins (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
From the first page, Nancy Harmon Jenkins draws you deep into the soul of Tuscany, where she lives part of the year and where tradition heavily shades daily life. Jenkins calls Tuscans "the Yankees of Italy" because they are as frugal and plainspoken as the New Englanders with whom she grew up. Their food is elementally simple, relying heavily on the region's unique, salt-free bread, pane scicco, the intense olive oil that has become famous around the world, and beans slowly cooked in a tall clay pot, or fiasco.

Jenkins enthralls the reader as she discusses Tuscan food and how her friends and neighbors gather, raise, and prepare it. Flavors of Tuscany is dense with good food. There are roasts, the bread-based soup ribollita, crostini, and less-known pleasures such as tomato-studded High Summer Risotto and Braised Sweet Pepper Stew. Jenkins's observations about a fast-changing way of living resonate with anyone who cares about quality of life. Her culinary descriptions may inspire you to build an outdoor brick oven or plan a trip to taste the wines, olive oil, and other special flavors of Tuscany. --Dana Jacobi

From Publishers Weekly
Rarely does an author so comprehensively connect gastronomy to geography as Harmon Jenkins does in this beautifully mapped and lovingly detailed collection of Tuscan delicacies. Having owned a house near Cortona for 25 years, she spends good blocks of text introducing us to the landscape and the neighbors from whom she draws inspiration. Foodstuffs are tagged to their specific Tuscan regions (e.g., a Rice and Onion Tart with ricotta, we learn, is typical of the Lunigiana hill in northern Tuscany). Simple ingredients are the hallmark of this cuisine, so these recipes demand the freshest of vegetables and meats, Italian-style flour and, if possible, access to a pig liver or two. This is no cuisine for vegetarians, Harmon Jenkins enjoys pointing out: even the Meatless Ragu includes a couple of ounces of prosciutto. So, pastas with meat sauce, chicken, pork and rabbit claim most of the glory until it's time for the desserts. Drawn from the recipes of Cortona dessert master Emilio Banchelli, these include Fried Rags for Epiphany or Carnival (pastry flavored with sherry and aniseed) and a Rustic Torte of hazelnut. Harmon Jenkins surpasses most regional cookbooks with captivating prose notable for her smart use of similes to bring exotic dishes down to earth. Her Crostini is "what we might call Etruscan egg salad." In addition to a bibliography, there is a section on where to eat when you go to visit, a short chapter on Tuscan wines and one devoted to the only potable that takes priority over vino: olive oil.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (May 11, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767901444
• ISBN-13: 978-0767901444
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #657,104 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Literature among Cookbooks, May 21, 2000

By A Customer

There are a couple of genre whose excesses are apparent. One is cookbooks, the other is books about Tuscany. Indeed the very word Tuscany seems to have inspired dishware, linens; the list goes on. Given this plethora, it is a genuine delight to read this (or any) book by Nancy Harmon Jenkins. She not only serves up the greatest recipes, which is expected of any cookbook worth its salt, but her writing is charming and most intelligent. This is one book which not only gives the Flavors of Tuscany, but its people, its customs...its reality! Ms. Jenkins surpasses the usual and customary in food writing, she is a social historian who uses food to instill a genuine reality. Great food, even a better read!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Molto Bene!, July 21, 2006

By	H. Oliver "Italian Soul" (Brentwood, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I fell in love with Tuscan food years ago. This book has the recipes I love--I have never found a bad recipe in here, and many of the pages are so dog-eared and dripped-on that you can tell they're the ones used again and again. The wonderful comments, the simplicity of the recipes, the incredible food that results are an invitation to linger outside on a balmy summer night and, like the Tuscans, make dinner an EVENT that everyone enjoys for hours. A little wine, good friends, the setting sun, and good Italian food--Incredible!

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice recipes in concept - bad proportional estimates, September 14, 2008

By	theoperadiva (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

I purchased this book some time ago when I first began cooking seriously, and I recall having several recipe disasters under my belt before putting it away (an incredibly confusing and altogether too large bread recipe that ended up a liquid disaster after a 3 day process, for example). I've returned to it now years later after honing my skills and spending a great deal of time in Italy, and I'm equally miffed by the problems this books presents. The lack of specificity in the instructions is what is particularly irksome. I'm now making the Vegetable Soup in preparation for a Ribollita, which requires cooked beans (the type of beans are never specified - even suggestions are never mentioned), a bunch of chard, a bunch of kale and half a green cabbage (this is how they are stated in the ingredient list). I've chopped my way through all three, only to see near the end of the recipe that the three together are supposed to amass a mere 4 to 5 cups. I've never seen a bunch of either kale or chard alone that would only amount to 4 to 5 cups. Perhaps saying 2 cups of each kale and chard and one of cabbage would work? Her sense of proportion and lack of detail are just maddening.

Do the recipes appear authentic? Yes. Are they unnecessarily complicated? Absolutely. Many recipes require three separate stages or more. The soup, for example, requires making the beans (one day), then the vegetable soup (another day) and finally, the Ribollita on the third. I'm certain there is a recipe out there that cuts this to one to two days tops. A review of many other recipes in the book show similar multi-day/stage processes. I'm not averse to such options in theory, but if you are looking to master the simplicity of truly great tuscan cuisine, perhaps there is a more precise but less cumbersome book out there from which to choose.