Review by Booklist Review
Caggiano adds to her already impressive list of outstanding cookbooks with this urban-based volume. For each of five Italian cities (Rome, Florence, Bologna, Milan, and Venice), she offers recipes for antipasti, first courses, entrees, vegetables, and desserts. Appealing to the traveler, she includes for each city a guide to her own favorite restaurants as well as significant markets that dedicated gastronomes should not miss. Caggiano's recipes tend to the simple and seasonal, and most are easily reproducible in American kitchens. A surefire appetizer calls for pureeing mortadella and mixing it with cheese and cream for a spread to top toasted bread rounds. Long-cooked Florentine pasta sauce attains richness from ground beef, chopped aromatics, and plenty of Chianti. A complex, unique Roman pasta dish sauces noodles made from Japanese green tea with shrimp and candied cherry tomatoes. Less radical and more traditional pastas such as chard-stuffed tortelloni in Gorgonzola sauce and entrees on the order of stuffed pork chops and braised beef broaden the book's appeal. --Mark Knoblauch Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Caggiano's pleasing collection allows home cooks to follow the current fashion of spotlighting regional Italian cooking by sampling recipes from five cities Rome, Florence, Bologna, Milan and Venice. She offers full menus, from antipasti to dessert, with multiple options for each course so one can choose between familiarity and novelty: for example, with Venetian appetizers, she suggests comforting Whipped Creamy Salt Cod, or piquant Salame with Honey and Wilted Radicchio. From Tuscany, she offers recipes for Rigatoni Dragged with Florentine Meat Rag? and Ricotta-Parmigiano-Spinach Dumplings. Caggiano (Biba's Taste of Italy) emphasizes seasonality, as with a Milanese Roasted Capon with Pancetta, Sage, and Rosemary, or Rome's delightful "La Vignarola," a springtime stew of fava beans, peas and artichokes. Though simple, many of the recipes are time-intensive, but are worth the effort. Along with the recipes, Caggiano includes brief but tantalizing descriptions of eating traditions in each city and recommendations for wines and ingredients. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Owner of Biba, a well-regarded restaurant in Sacramento, CA, Caggiano is also a cooking teacher and the author of five other cookbooks. In her latest, she presents recipes from Italy's "splendid cities": Rome, Florence, Bologna, Milan, and Venice. Each chapter opens with an introduction to the city and a sample menu of typical dishes, followed by 20 or so recipes, many of them from Caggiano's favorite restaurants. There are also sections on wine; lists of recommended restaurants and trattorias, food markets and cooking schools, and more; and helpful glossaries of food terms for each city. Caggiano was born in Bologna and has traveled extensively throughout Italy. Her new cookbook is a great travel guide as well. Recommended for most collections. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
