[.ca] Sicilian Home Cooking: Family Recipes from Gangivecchio (ISBN 037540399X)

From Amazon.com:
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

Easy-to-use, entertaining cookbook with yummy recipes:
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!