Pasta Revised (ISBN 0756603684)

One of the Best Cookbooks I Own:
Truly, if I could only own one cookbook of pasta recipies, this book would be the one I'd want. There are countless books available on the subject and yet none I've seen present pasta cooking in such clarity and with such excellent results. If you want to know how to make all the basics, and make them right, you'll find the answers here: Pasta with Olive Oil and Garlic, with Marinara, Pasta Primavera...they may seem simple but if you follow the directions here, you can't go wrong. Handy details include pasta noodle suggestions as well as alternatives that work well, and variations on recipies depending on what ingredients you have available as well as how you may want to experiment and mix things up. Many recipies in this book have become staples of my cooking, and favorites include the Pasta with Chick Peas and the perfect Putanesca. This cookbook gets my highest recommendation.

Beautiful photos, but underwhelming in scope:
Book: "Pasta: Every Way for Every Day" by Eric Trueille & Anna Del Conte (2nd American Edition, 2004) Rating: 3 (of 5) stars Ok, this is a slightly longish review, so get comfortable, and I'll do my best to explain why I feel this book aimed a tad low, and only merits three stars. I grabbed this book off a discount rack for 1/3 it's cover price. I found it mildly diverting, and too short a read. It actually took me longer to write this review than to read the book. The good (and the merely adequate): * PHOTOS: The food photography is generally excellent and honest - the pictures and garnishes actually match the recipes (courtesy of one of the authors doing all their own cooking and plating for the photos). So, for those who thrive on food photography, and like to `window-shop' for recipes, you'll like this book for it's numerous, oversized, and delightfully accurate photos. * ORGANIZATION: The recipes are organized into 11 helpful general flavor categories (Tomatoes, Cheese & Butter, Seafood, Meat, Olives & Olive Oil, Greens & Herbs, Beans & Lentils, Garlic, Peppers & Eggplant, and Filled Pasta), and within those categories they're sub organized by cook-time style (make ahead, no cook, quick cook, slow cook, and baked). I like the latter (cook-time style), but unfortunately, there's no convenient recipe index ... the omission of which is only partially made up for by a rear index and their "Pasta Planner" and Pasta on the Menu" tables. * HELPFUL INFORMATION: The chapter introductions include some helpful advice (for beginners) on the `how to' basics - minimally stocking one's pantry for pasta cuisine, salting and boiling water, judging pasta doneness, storing fresh ingredients, etc. Particularly useful are the little tidbits at the end of some of the recipes, which include listing the recommended pasta types for a given sauce, and "think ahead" information (i.e., useful tips on advance preparation and storage - something the vast majority of cookbooks routinely omit). * COMPETENCE: On the whole, everything in this book seems very competent, if a bit over terse and unspectacular in places. On the one hand, it's refreshing to see balanced flavors, and cogent advice on things like the `bell curve' of doneness for squid (which experienced cooks know must either be cooked hot and VERY briefly, or slowly for a long time, to avoid toughness), taking care not to burn the garlic, etc. On the other hand, some sections aimed far too low. Take the opening blurb on p,102: IMNSHO, flat parsley is best soaked loose for several minutes in a sink-full of cold water, drained (or spun), pressed dry in a chef towel, then rolled up in dry paper towels and stored in a loose plastic bag in the produce drawer of your fridge ... the authors however make no mention of washing their leafy herbs, and apparently just toss it in a plastic bag into the fridge, perch it tented in a cup of water (which only works well for scallions and asparagus BTW), or chopping it unwashed straight into the freezer. The section on cheese is anemic too. The advice to store hard parm and romano in the fridge wrapped simply in foil is sub-par. I have a food science tip for the authors - the first time you use a fresh block of hard grating cheese, reduce it's surface area by grating first all the rough sides until smooth, then wrap first in a paper towel lightly moistened with white vinegar (change it every 2-3 weeks), then place in a freezer-proof plastic bag, burp out all the air, and store in the produce drawer ... the reduced surface area and slight presence of vinegar inhibit mold, and the freezer bag is less permeable to moisture loss. Stored that way, parm, and to a lesser degree, romano, can last for several months. The not so good: (in no particular order) * EXCESSIVE VISUAL FILLER: The page count is a thinnish 168, and only about one fourth of that is useful recipe text - the remaining three fourths is visual filler (excessively oversized and/or unnecessary photos & white space). The first recipe doesn't appear until page 31, and most of what comes before it mostly pictures and fluff. If you stripped all the pictures and fluff out of this book, and just left the useful text, it'd barely weigh in at 40 pages, covering just over 80 recipes (excluding minor variations). With a cover price of $20 USD (as of this writing), that works out to 50 cents per page and 25 cents per recipe ... not a good value. For example - the chapter on "pasta with beans and lentils" includes only 3 recipes, but it's padded out to 6 pages with photos and whitespace. For the same page count, I'd rather have had 6 recipes, and limited the photos to half a page each (which is still plenty big). * UNDERWHELMING SCOPE: This book is also limited almost exclusively to pastas dressed hot or warm ... there are no pasta soups, or cold pasta salads. Even what little turf *is* covered is covered rather thinly ... on pgs 16-19 for instance, the book only describes 9 flat and 6 shaped pastas, which barely scratches the surface of the shapes commonly available. The vast majority of pastas covered are also dried ... the section on fresh pasta seems to be an afterthought, and is limited to just flat egg pasta, rolled with a hand-crank machine (nice if you own one, useless if you don't). It would have been more useful to many readers to cover the rolling pin by default, and leave the machine as an optional extravagance for the well equipped reader. Also, many first time pasta makers are intimidated by kneaded egg dough, and would find a simple semolina and water recipe (no eggs, minimal kneading) a lot more approachable ... but the authors don't even mention it. * ETHNICALLY NARROW FOCUS: I adore Italian cuisine, and cook it semi-regularly, but I wish the cover or dust jacket of this book had made it more obvious that this book is exclusively ITALIAN, in its ingredients, recipes, and culinary ethnocentricity. With all due respect to Anna Del Conte, a reader will most assuredly NOT get struck by a Jovian Thunderbolt for using non-Italian ingredients, or the "heresy" (exact word, p.25) of using grated cheese with one's shellfish {or white clam sauce}. I found the ethnically vague title doubly irritating, given that Treuille spends time on the last page elaborating how he often cooks in the "Books for Cooks" bookstore in London ... you'd think that such a cross-cultural culinary literary setting would have inspired a clearer and more insightful book title yes ? Nope. * UNDEREXPLAINED INFORMATION: This book is lightly seasoned with under explained factoids. For example, on p.21, the authors claim, without explaining why, using a little oil in your pasta water is a pointless waste if you boil the pasta with plenty of water and stir it in timely fashion. For the uninitiated, that's called a half-truth. The reason for the oil (and even most professional chefs don't know the food science behind this) is not to lubricate the pasta, but rather to serve as an anti-foaming agent, which helps prevents boilovers if the ratio of water to pasta is less extravagant than the 5 quarts per pound. Anyone who's ever brewed beer knows all about "hot break" protein boilover. All you need (for boiling pasta) is about 1-2 tsp of oil per pot, to form a small ring of tiny droplets around the edge of the rolling boil - that's it. Personally, I prefer to use just enough water to give the pasta room to move freely, and save energy - I'm not trying to boil pasta-flavored bathwater for the half the building, or run up my gas bill. * TERMINOLOGY: The dicing size of vegetables and meat is rarely, if ever, mentioned ... you're expected to flip to the back of the book (without being instructed to do so), and guestimate the size based of a few `life-size' photographs. That's bad editing. Sorry, but if a recipe calls for onions to be diced 1/4", 1/8", 1/16", or sliced thinly, the recipe should always SAY SO. Also, you have to flip to the end of the book in order to confirm that all references to "butter" throughout all the recipes are indeed unsalted butter ... they should just have said so in each recipe, without making the reader hunt for it. * HEADNOTES: There aren't any ... just a brief chapter note at the start of each section about the chief ingredient. They do occasionally include a brief one sentence "Chef's Note" at the bottom of every fourth recipe or so (right after the `make ahead' note) to give a helpful tip or explain an Italian term (ex: they define puttanesca on p.34 but not primavera on p.116), but IMNSHO such notes are NOT an adequate replacement for proper head notes. Verdict: Not a bad introductory book, but underwhelming for more experienced cooks. Certainly above average, but the authors could, and should, have aimed much higher. I mean come on, how can you have a chapter devoted to pasta with olives, and then only include three recipes, all of them featuring pitted olives from a can ? The whole book is like that - first it entices, then falls short of elevated expectations. I hope the authors will revist and expand it someday, but I'm not holding my breath because I know as well as you do that people like me are not the primary target audience. Meanwhile, other books come readily to mind ... Marcella Hazan's "Essentials of Classic Italian Cuisine" has none of the fancy photos, but covers most of the same material in much greater educational depth ... and pasta's just one chapter in her book. I've also seen a plethora of oriental books (mostly Chinese & Thai) that cover pasta making just as well, if not better ... albeit with a different flavor palatte.

YUMMY!!!:
I was looking for a complete pasta cookbook and I found it in this one. It has color photos of every recipe and the lay out is user friendly. Much better than I expected.

Pasta:
All recipes are fast and easy. Yet, for pasta, they are the best I have found

Beautiful book:
This book is typical of others published by DK, who also publish wonderful travel guides. It is a feast for the eyes, filled with beautiful pictures and detailed explanations. The recipes are divided into sections with the primary ingredient (cheese, meat, garlic, tomato) and classify according to cooking time (no cook, quick cook, slow cook), so it is very easy to narrow down dinner options based on what you have on hand and how much time you have. I've tried about a dozen recipes from the book and they have all been delicious and turned out almost as beautiful as the picture in the book.