[.ca] Mario Batali Simple Italian Food: Recipes from My Two ... (ISBN 0609603000)

From Amazon.com:
Sure to excite lovers of the best Italian cooking, Mario Batali Simple Italian Food: Recipes from My Two Villages reenvisions classic home cucina with enticing results. Batali, known to fans as "Molto Mario" from his Television Food Network shows, and as chef-owner of Manhattan's much-loved Po and Babbo restaurants, presents nearly 250 of his favorite recipes, traditional and innovative, for delectable salads, pastas, grilled specialties, ragus, and desserts, among others. The collection, inspired by the cooking of Borgo Cappene, a hillside village in northern Italy, and Greenwich Village, where Batali culls exemplary ingredients for his restaurants, reflects Batali's commitment to simple cooking--impeccable ingredients sensibly combined and properly prepared. Cooks seeking deeply flavored, smartly presented dishes will embrace Batali's recipes for everyday meals and for entertaining. Arranged by courses, antipasti through formaggi and dolci (cheese and sweets), the uncomplicated dishes include White Bean Bruschetta with Grilled Radicchio Salad, Baked Lasagna with Asparagus and Pesto, and Roasted Porgy with Peas, Garlic, Scallions and Mint. Gorgonzola with Spiced Walnuts and Port Wine Syrup with fresh fruit would make a lovely conclusion to any dinner. Throughout, Batali provides advice on dish preparation; there are 32 pages of color photos and dozens of black-and-white shots of life in Batali's two villages. Batali's reliance on the best ingredients simply prepared, rather than on fussy restaurant techniques, places his dishes squarely in the realm of home cooks. They'll find his book a keeper. --Arthur Boehm

A fine book, but read the intro before buying:
Far too many people look at the title "Simple Italian Food" and think that the book is going to include tons of 30 minute recipes for everyday Italian cooking. Wrong. Anyone who has watched Batali's show, or anyone who reads the introduction to this book will find out that what he is referring to is the use of a few, excellent ingredients in each dish, as opposed to a long list of ingredients that will require one whole cart at the grocery store to carry. Most of the recipes require 6 or 7 ingredients, tops. Some are exotic (most have easy substitutes), yet one of Batali's primary but often-missed points is that the kind of ingredient isn't important, but its quality. I'm surprised by how few a number of people took this concept away from the book. The recipes turn out delicious. They can be intensive at times, particularly the pasta dishes. Most of the meat dishes also require long periods of braising. Few of the dishes are quick-prepares. THAT'S FINE IF THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. So look through the book a little bit before buying and determine if this is what you are expecting. If so, you'll likely enjoy it.

Sophisticated Useless Dishes:
Sure, Mario B. can make exotic fancy rare finds that can be prepared into what one might call: Italian Dishes. My question is, what Italian makes these dishes? I am a born Italian and never seen food prepared in such an upscale distorted unappetizing fashion. Its food that one will never make or utilize therefore, I find them useless. If you cant make recipes from a cookbook, whats the point. His imagination is certainly on another level, nowhere touching the earth or has any concept of what real Italian food is. Mario can be informative and can describe food very well, and might impress a few but lacks the geniune flavors of the real thing.

Sophisticated Useless Dishes:
Sure, Mario B. can make exotic fancy rare finds that can be prepared into what one might call: Italian Dishes. My question is, what Italian makes these dishes? I am a born Italian and never seen food prepared in such an upscale distorted unappetizing fashion. Its food that one will never make or utilize therefore, I find them useless. If you cant make recipes from a cookbook, whats the point. His imagination is certainly on another level, nowhere touching the earth or has any concept of what real Italian food is. Mario can be informative and can describe food very well, and might impress a few but lacks the geniune flavors of the real thing.

Mario the Italian Wanna Be:
If you never grew up on Italian food or if you are not a Italian born, there's no way one can regognize the true authentic flavors of real Italian food. You can certainly try to immediate it, but its like comparing Leather to Pleather. I see Mario multi talented in his huge glossary of fancy words that describe history and perhaps description of foods in a high ranking cooking university. He is best suited somewhere in northern alps of Italy teaching Italian foods to the very elite and most sophisticated snobs who would be very interested in learning Italian Mario abstract-style and maybe paying a few hundred dollars for a fancy odd meal.

A Professional Chef and Successful Communicator:
I find it hard to be entirely objective about this book, as Mario Batali is my number one culinary hero. Through his show 'Molto Mario' on the Food Network, he exposed me for the first time to Italian regional and microregional cuisines and the 'if it grows together, it goes together' doctrine. This is called 'terroir by the fans of cooking from 'the F country', which Mario loves to hate. This also brought into full light the doctrine of 'buy the very best of what is fresh today and that will determine what you cook tonight.' Mario does not give you the cerebral approach of someone like Paul Bertolli or Tom Colicchio or, ultimately, like Thomas Keller, but Mario gets all the important stuff right, in a way we can appreciate and use. I love the way Mario quite honestly confesses to having lifted most of his recipes from Italian grandmothers, as he believes that the best Italian cooking is done in the home and not in the Restaurante. In spite of his heart being with Italian cuisine, he is never disrespectful of American food and produce, especially when the American product is superior to the Italian. This book is comprised of recipes primarily from the extended three-year stage he served in a little trattoria in Emilia-Romagna, a stones throw from the border with Toscana. But, it does contain several recipes from other parts of Emilia-Romagna, Toscana, Lazio (Rome) and even Sicily. His two 'villages' are Porretta Terme in Italy and Greenwich Village in Manhattan. The book has six chapters of recipes, these being: Antipasti, 43 recipes including crostini, bruschetta, polenta, pickled vegetables, mushrooms, and cured fish. Primi (pasta or rice), 49 recipes including recipes for fresh pastas, gnocchi, couscous, and risottos. Seconde (main dish) Pesce (fish), 27 recipes including scallops, calamari, prawns, crabs, lobster, snapper, and even frogs' legs. Carne (meat), 32 recipes including rabbit, pheasant, lamb, veal, beef, sausage, liver, and sweetmeats. Contorni (side dishes) 26 recipes including polenta, many vegetable dishes, grilled, fried, and pickled. Formaggi & Dolce (cheese and sweets) 27 recipes including fruit and confections with funny names. Each section includes pantry recipes for sauces and dressings not included in this count. I would recommend this book primarily for the reading of Mario's unvarnished enthusiasm for food and the Italian dedication to (relative) simplicity of method and freshness of your 'prima materia'. I would also highly recommend his basic tomato sauce (I make it all the time) and his recipes using fresh pasta. As he points out, there is a big difference between the fresh pasta of the north and the dry pasta of the south both in the way they are made, in the types of flour used, and in the sauces appropriate to each. Mario's recommendations on making and dressing pasta are worth the price of admission. The black and white or sepia photographs of Mario and his colleagues at the trattoria lend a warm 'gemutlichkeit' (sorry, I don't know the Italian word) to the proceedings. The color photos are better than average, in that the photographer succeeds in getting the entire dish in focus. I highly recommend the book for the authenticity of the recipes and his introduction into a deeper appreciation of Italian food. It is not a complete presentation of Italian dishes, but it is a great partner to a broader treatment done by Marcella Hazan, Lydia Bastianich, Giuliano Bugialli, or the Cooks Illustrated volume on Classic Italian recipes. I agree with those who warn that the book is not for novices, but is the sort of book which can show the way from innocence to experience.