Rating: 
Summary: funny stories
Review: my friend David wrote this book, and he is a funny, witty guy. the story about how his italian mom tried serving cow stomach by calling it "trippa" is GREAT ! and i have repeated it to lots of folks. this book is good because it is not overwhelming for a non-cook like myself. i mean, there is a recipe for spaghetti with black pepper and cheese on it, how easy is that ?
Rating:
Summary: funny stories
Review: my friend David wrote this book, and he is a funny, witty guy. the story about how his italian mom tried serving cow stomach by calling it "trippa" is GREAT ! and i have repeated it to lots of folks. this book is good because it is not overwhelming for a non-cook like myself. i mean, there is a recipe for spaghetti with black pepper and cheese on it, how easy is that ?
Rating:
Summary: If you love Italian food as I do, you must buy this book.
Review: The recipes are great. I especially loved the carbonara and the spicy Amatriciana tomato sauce. Finally I have a cookbook with my favorite recipes! I own many Italian cookbooks but I wasn't aware that some of the classics I love are from Rome. A friend gave this book to me as a gift. It's a beautiful book with lavish color photos. I like it so much I'm going to give it to everyone on my Christmas list.
Rating:
Summary: Living, the Roman Way
Review: This wonderfully evocative book about Roman food is more than a cookbook, it is a guide for how to cook the Roman way, eat the Roman way and live the Roman way. This book is a great one for those who wish to take the fine art of armchair travel one sensual step further. How about a plate of Spaghetti alla Carbonara (the ultimate comfort food) to eat from that armchair as you thumb through these receipes, histories, first-hand stories and gloriously picturesque photographs. Those photographs alone make the book worthwhile, but I look forward to trying out all of the receipes which thus far have been simple, easy to follow, and successful. A wonderful book all the way around -- one-stop-shopping for Christmas gifts!
Rating:
Summary: Living, the Roman Way
Review: This wonderfully evocative book about Roman food is more than a cookbook, it is a guide for how to cook the Roman way, eat the Roman way and live the Roman way. This book is a great one for those who wish to take the fine art of armchair travel one sensual step further. How about a plate of Spaghetti alla Carbonara (the ultimate comfort food) to eat from that armchair as you thumb through these receipes, histories, first-hand stories and gloriously picturesque photographs. Those photographs alone make the book worthwhile, but I look forward to trying out all of the receipes which thus far have been simple, easy to follow, and successful. A wonderful book all the way around -- one-stop-shopping for Christmas gifts!
Rating:
Summary: Shootout in the Forum. Two excellent books. One Winner
Review: Two books on Roman cooking have appeared within the last eighteen (18) months, which gives us a golden opportunity to proof one against the other to find the better book. The first published last year, the current subject, is 'Cooking the Roman Way' by David Downie. The second is the more recently published book 'In a Roman Kitchen: Timeless Recipes from the Eternal City' by Jo Bettoja.In general, Downie's book appears to be based more on restaurante, trattoria, and osteria recipes while Bettoja seems to rely more on home cooking recipes. Still, there is a significant overlap of recipe names. I had no trouble at all finding five recipes with the same traditional Italian name, although the English translation of the name may have been a little different. I give high marks to both authors for giving the Italian names of all dishes in both the text and the index. I compared the recipes for five dishes: Gnocchi di Semolino alla Romana
Spaghetti alla Carbonara
Cipolline in Agrodolce alla Romana
Carciofi alla Giudia
Frittata con Zucchini Although no pair of recipes was the same, I can find virtually nothing in these five recipes which would suggest that one author was presenting consistently superior recipes. I was slightly annoyed with Downie for specifying white coctail onions in the Cipolline recipe, especially since I have no trouble finding cipolline in my local Pennsylvania megamart. My conclusion that Downie relies on the Trattoria and Bettoja relies on the home is in the sources they cite for their recipes. Both appear to give equal time to the influence of the Jewish quarter on Roman cooking. In Bettoja's case, the focus seems to be on a large number of recipes for each major type of Roman dish. She has, for example, more pasta, artichoke, and fava bean recipes than Downie, and also more dessert recipes. This is ironic since Downie controverts one of my hero Mario Batali's claims that Italians do not go in for sweets. In contrast, Downie includes many seminally Roman recipes which Bettoja simply ignores. He has excellent recipes for making both Pizza Bianco, a certifiable Roman speciality, and fresh fettucini, including sound recommendations on making the fettucini completely by hand and with the assistance of power mixers and power pasta rolling machines. Most surprising of all is that Downie includes the recipe for Gnocchi di Patate while Bettoja does not. My understanding from Mario is that this is a Roman speciality and every trattoria in Rome serves it on Thursday. Alternately, Claudia Roden identifies it as a northern (Friuli) Italian speciality. Since Downie specifically cites potato gnocchi as the Roman canonical dish for Thursday and thereby agrees with Mario, I have to assume that while the dish may be promenant outside Rome, it is certainly a distinctively Roman dish as well. Bettoja is a teacher who runs her own culinary school in Rome while Downie is a culinary journalist, so it surprises me that it is Downie who has the superior sidebars on some basic techniques such as how to clean an artichoke (sidebars with step by step photographs) and how to roast and skin sweet peppers. Even though Bettoja's book is later and even though the books have identical list prices and almost identical page counts, Downie's book is much richer in the quality and quantity of it's photographs, almost all with useful captions. I generally do not count good photography to a cookbook's credit, but in the case of a book dedicated to so photogenic a location as Rome, I must make an exception here. For the identical price, Downie and his photographer and editors have simply done a much better job. Downie's book is also richer in sidebars on general Roman and Italian culinary matters. The sidebar on the sources of Pecorino Romano, which is made in greater quanities in Sardinia than it is in Lazio, was a great surprise. His headnotes for individual dishes are also richer in explaining the history of many dishes such as Fettucini Alfredo and Fettucini alla Papalina. In the battle of the blurbs, Downie has Mario and Carol Field while Bettoja has Lidia Bastianich and Frances Mayes on her back cover. I think that's a tie. I would buy both of these books, even with the rather substantial overlap in named dishes. The overlap is actually a plus for amateur foodie scholars, as it gives one the sense of exactly how different two sources can be with exactly the same dish. Bettoja is a great source for pasta recipes and Roman desserts, while Downie has much greater success at evoking the Roman ambiance and in covering deeper techniques. Downie also wins the points on domestic sources for flour and other Italian specialities. Bettoja rather quixotically gives us the telephone numbers of companies in Rome. Not very useful unless you plan to visit Rome in the near future. Both books are recommended. If you need to choose one, I would pick Downie's book.
Rating: 
Summary: nostalgic
Review: well, what can I say: having lived in Rome many many years, the title caught my attention. Yes, it is all true, those stories, those foods, those open-air markets, those wild greens sold as "misticanza". I am particularly grateful for the names of the individuals portrayed in the pictures. And something that other cookbooks don't mention, but this does, is the difference between american Globe artichokes and the Romanesco artichoke. My only regret, and unavoidable in my opinion, is that as italian society is evolving, those people portrayed in the book in bringing us the sources of these unique foods, as the old babuska-like produce market ladies that roamed the Appian way and Valley of the Caffarella for those wild greens to sell it like a sort of "spring-mix", are a species destined to extinction. The market Campo de Fiori is not anymore a market for the masses, but a market for the very wealthy, where peaches shipped in winter from Argentina are sold for two Euros each. In a way, the title given to this review reflects the fact that this book is really describing this almost extinct world. How the masses, now living in the suburbs and away from open markets of downtown rome, cope in continuing the culinary traditions of their parents and grandparents in a society that limits the traditional role of the home-maker that has plenty of free time to shop in morning-only markets, is the real question for the future. I say to the authors, see what the supermarkets in the suburbs are packing and selling in the produce section, and you'll see what nostalgic cookbooks will be written 30-40 years from now.
Rating:
Summary: nostalgic
Review: well, what can I say: having lived in Rome many many years, the title caught my attention. Yes, it is all true, those stories, those foods, those open-air markets, those wild greens sold as "misticanza". I am particularly grateful for the names of the individuals portrayed in the pictures. And something that other cookbooks don't mention, but this does, is the difference between american Globe artichokes and the Romanesco artichoke. My only regret, and unavoidable in my opinion, is that as italian society is evolving, those people portrayed in the book in bringing us the sources of these unique foods, as the old babuska-like produce market ladies that roamed the Appian way and Valley of the Caffarella for those wild greens to sell it like a sort of "spring-mix", are a species destined to extinction. The market Campo de Fiori is not anymore a market for the masses, but a market for the very wealthy, where peaches shipped in winter from Argentina are sold for two Euros each. In a way, the title given to this review reflects the fact that this book is really describing this almost extinct world. How the masses, now living in the suburbs and away from open markets of downtown rome, cope in continuing the culinary traditions of their parents and grandparents in a society that limits the traditional role of the home-maker that has plenty of free time to shop in morning-only markets, is the real question for the future. I say to the authors, see what the supermarkets in the suburbs are packing and selling in the produce section, and you'll see what nostalgic cookbooks will be written 30-40 years from now.
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