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Summary: Bravo, Fred Plotkin!
Review: "There is no frigate like a book," the poet wrote, and Fred Plotkin has proved it again. His magnificnet new book turns a little-known region into an exotic character, with whom we fall in love, and whose facets are revealed gradually and tenderly by the appreciation and eloquence of the narrator. Thank you, Fred Plotkin, for turning geography into biography.
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Summary: Italian Food vs. Italian Cuisine
Review: Any reader who has travelled and enjoyed great Italian food...made by any chef...located any place throughout the world...knows what Italian food ingredients are and how they work together to make a great dish. This book and this chef are such a resource. Put this book in your Amazon shopping cart. If you receive it and it doesn't "pass muster"...return it. Then write your own review. In the meantime, I recommend this to anyone who really enjoys good food.
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Summary: It is indeed Splendid!
Review: As Americans living in Italy, my husband & I have used Fred Plotkin's _Italy for the Gourmet Traveller_ as a guidebook when travelling throughout Italy. It has never disappointed us yet. Now we have added this *wonderful* book to our collection. More than a cookbook, this book explores the history and culture of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region (where we, quite luckily, happen to live), as well as the cuisine. There are great explanations of the region's different ingredients, herbs & spices, wines, cheeses, coffee, grappa, as well as travel information and sources for some of the harder-to-find ingredients. And then, of course, there are all of the great recipes, each with an author's note (and usually a wine suggestion)! Now I feel doubly fortunate--to have had the chance to live in this region, and also to have acquired this book so I can re-create a little bit of Friuli when we leave.
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Summary: THE EATER FORTUNATA
Review: Fred Plotkin knows Italy, food, unusual combinations -- everything-- especially in this absolutely wonderful book on the Friuli region. Sauerkraut soup infused with smoked pork, panchetta, spices, filled with cranberry beans ( or whatever your favorite choice is), gnocchi filled with butternut squash, veal shin--the meat sooo tender, zucchini seasoned with cinnamon (how fabulous). So many recipes, so little time to make them all but you will. And you will learn much about this region, unlike any other in Italy and using many herbs and spices you would not expect. This is a wonderful homage to Lidia Bastianich who grew up in that area and while her two books on Friuli are incomparable and filled with great recipes, this one will finish the meal beautifully.
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Summary: Watch out...
Review: there are problems with the recipes. When the first two recipes I try don't work out I usually give up on the book. The recipe for apple cake with shredded aples etc didn't really work in terms of the proportion of dough to filling for me and the crust had too much of the baking soda or powder (don't have the book with me at the moment) flavor, especially the next day. I started the recipe for butternut squash gnocchi and that seemed off as the squash took much longer to bake and in the fridge there was no draining at all - I cut my losses at that point and did other things with the squash. Then I found a recipe that I had cut out from the NY Times when the book was reviewed for a poppy seed dessert and clearly there is a step missing, also, would the poppy seeds be lightly pounded, pounded to a paste? The NY Times reviewer mentions favorably that the recipes lend themselves to cooking the way a relative would instruct. Well, my mother's "a little bit of this, a little bit of that" instructions frequently do not work and this approach should not be over romanticized. The history of the region section in the beginning is a pleasure.
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Summary: NOT ENOUGH PHOTOS
Review: This is not a review really.I agree with all the other reviewers that this is a very good book ,but I find annoying the fact that it has only a few photos out of its 400 pages.The book would really be a gem if it was properly illustrated.The couple of dozen photos that it has are just not enough!
Rating:
Summary: NOT ENOUGH PHOTOS
Review: This is not a review really.I agree with all the other reviewers that this is a very good book ,but I find annoying the fact that it has only a few photos out of its 400 pages.The book would really be a gem if it was properly illustrated.The couple of dozen photos that it has are just not enough!
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Summary: Lucky Land--Lucky You!
Review: Why so many cookbooks these days? One reason is that anyone can troll the Internet for a few hours and download enough recipes to make a book with very little effort; some "authors" apparently do just that. Not, however, Fred Plotkin, who has produced here not a book but a feast that demands the attention of any serious cook or food-lover.Fred Plotkin's field is Italy--all Italy (as in "Italy for the Gourmet Traveler," which you should order) and the obscure and less-known regions of Italy, as in this book, which is centered on Friuli-Venezia Giulia, high in the northeast, and in his previous one on Liguria (order that too, while you're at it), the superb "Recipes from Paradise: Life and Food on the Italian Riviera (order that, too). These regions--their very existence--will come as a surprise to many Americans, who have been led by decades of relentless and superficial media coverage to believe that Italy is Tuscany and that Tuscany is only the area between Florence and Siena. Plotkin doesn't strip-mine a region and bung a lot of recipes into a book. He explores and absorbs it. He visits Italy frequently and has often lived there for extended periods, sharing the life of regions that call out to him. In this case, he writes--elegantly, feelingly--of a region he has known for more than 25 years. For this reason, people and places come alive as welcoming presences. Recipes? There are recipes galore here, and you will be happy (I hope) to know that that are not the tired (and overhyped) Tuscan retreads. With its Adriatic coast, this region was deeply involved in the Spice Trade at its height, and so you will find many spices used here, some of which (cumin, for example) will come as a surprise. I recommend this book for cold winter days. It'll warm you just to read it, and then you can start cooking too. Bill Marsano is a James Beard Award-winning writer on wine, spirits and food.
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