Italian Slow and Savory

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Summary: Italian Slow and Savory
Review: For those who were fortunate to be regulars at Joyce Goldstein's Square One restaurant in San Francisco in the 1980s-90s, her cookbooks are a wonderful way to stay attached to this brilliant chef and her art. She was a leader in merging Mediterranean and California cuisine and continues to emphasize the best of Italy especially.

Like all of Goldstein's cookbooks, this new one, "Italian Slow and Savory, is full of delicious, authentic recipes; a very readable and well-researched history of the cultural and social basis of the cuisine; and a celebration of the flavors - the foods and wines of each region of Italy. The recipes are easy-to-follow; the ingredients are readily available and not expensive, and there are suggestions for the wines to serve with each dish. This is a perfect book for the novice cook as well as for the most experienced cook and most seasoned traveler to Italy.

`Italian Slow and Savory' truly gives the reader the opportunity to cook and eat the way Italians do. For most of its history much of Italy has been poor, and the dishes of most regions reflect the poverty which gave rise to great creativity. It takes real talent to make the meager grain and vegetable and the scarcity of meat and fat into the most savory heart-warming dishes we see in this book. There is plentiful color photography of the dishes to make your mouth water.

The book is organized by food type. We won't list all of our favorite recipes, but here are a few: the artichoke recipes, the entire chapter on grains, the fish soups and stews, and the Parmigiano di Zucca.

Bob Long & Pat Perini, Long Vineyards, Napa Valley,CA

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Summary: A Must Cook Book For Those Who Love Italian Food
Review: I must admit that I own more cookbooks by Joyce Goldstein than any other author. I read them cover to cover. I am an experienced home chef and always learn new things from her books. I find they not only contain well written recipes but are educational and interesting.

Italian Slow and Savory is a wonderful cookbook that covers territory not found in many other Italian cookbooks I have seen. The introduction contains brief descriptions of the cuisine and wine from each of the Italian regions.

The selected recipes are from both well and lesser known regions. They are well written, easy to follow, and accurate with informative introductions. Notes at the end of each recipe provide specific wine recommendations with descriptions of the wine and information as to why the wines work with the dish.

Some of my particular favorite recipes include: Braised Tuna with Tomato, Garlic, and Mint from the Island of Favigna; Farro with Butternut Squash and Chestnuts from Tuscany; Sardinian Clam Soup with Fregola; and Agnello Brucialingua (Lamb to Burn Your Tongue) from the Abruzzo. Over the winter, I look forward to trying many of the stews and braising recipes using lamb and pork shoulder.

Italian Slow and Savory has been the perfect holiday gift for my friends and family who love to cook (both experienced and inexperienced home chefs) and are interested in Italian cuisiine.

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Summary: My new favorite cookbook
Review: I own too many Italian cookbooks, so I wasn't looking for another one, but my my sister gave me Joyce Goldstein's Italian Slow and Savory and I love it. In fact, it's now my favorite. Given my aforementioned Italian cookbook habit, that is saying a lot.

The author has traveled extensively through Italy and the recipes reflect an excellent palate and impressive knowledge of Italy's culinary history. Yet these aren't the same recipes that you see in other cookbooks over and over again. I'm a fairly experienced home cook, but I have little patience for over-produced dishes. Slow and Savory translates to easy and delicious. Also this is a beautiful book. The photographs are stunning and I love the way the recipes are laid out on the page. This is a cookbook I will use over and over again and will give as gifts-even to my friends who have too many cookbooks.

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Summary: Memorable meals
Review: With dishes like Sicilian Stuffed Beef Roll with Tomatoes and Red Wine, Goldstein's lush "slow food" tour of regional Italy will make you appreciate the cold weather and the savory aromas that warm a home like nothing else. Organized by course, each traditional dish is prefaced with some history or advice on technique and accompanied by wine advice. Many include variations.

The "slow food" movement calls for memorable, leisurely cooking and dining, and Goldstein's instructions flow deliberate and clear, as relaxing to read as to cook. The sauce chapter includes meat sauces from Naples, Bologna, Trieste and Tuscany, a Mushroom Sauce from Lombardy and an Artichoke Sauce from Liguria, as well as a Fish Sauce for Pasta. All recipes manage to be both homey and luxurious.

Among the main dishes are Baked Sturgeon with Pancetta and Marsala, Duck in a Sweet and Strong Sauce, Lamb Stew with Bitter Greens and Sheep's Milk Cheese, Pork Stew with Apples. Vegetables include Steamed Asparagus Pudding (puree and eggs) and Rice-Stuffed Tomatoes and side dishes include Wild Fennel and Bread Soup, and Polenta Ring with Cheese Fondue and Truffles. The photographs are large and lush and there are useful notes on ingredients and kitchen equipment as well as a culinary tour of Italy's regions. Simply gorgeous.

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Summary: Excellent Recipes, Wine Tips, and Background. Pricy
Review: `Italian Slow and Savory' is subtitled `A Cookbook by Joyce Goldstein' almost as if Joyce Goldstein were an easily recognized brand name on the level of Wolfgang Puck or Emeril Lagasse. Joyce is a very successful cookbook author and I have already given the highest ratings to two of her earlier books, `Saffron Shores' dealing with Shepardim cooking and `Mediterranean Shores', covering all the cuisines of the Mediterranean. Thus, Goldstein is well established in the community of writers on Mediterranean food lead by Paula Wolfert, Claudia Roden, Nancy Harmon Jenkins, Clifford Wright, and others. What Goldstein aims at doing here is combining the themes of Paula Wolfert's most recent book, `Slow Mediterranean Kitchen' with a coffee table sized, formatted, and priced book similar to recent volumes from a gaggle of famous restaurant chefs lead by Thomas Keller, Eric Rippert, Frank Stitt, and Rick Tramonto.

I can usually pick up on a very good or a very bad book after reading no more than one or two pages. I can see that this book goes to neither extreme. Its quota of photographs is relatively small for an oversize volume and the quality of the photography does not impress me (slight negative). The book's contents show that it is true to its title in that there are no dessert recipes, but it does seem to stray just a bit when it provides a few `fast' recipes in sidebars to slow recipes (slight negative). The book opens with a six-page overview of the culinary specialities of the major Italian provinces. There are many good books that cover this ground, but Goldstein manages to summarize a lot of stuff into these six pages, so I give a nice plus for this. The book also has a very generous bibliography that always scores points with me. It is large enough so that the fact that most of the entries are in Italian still gives us many good references in English. The value of the Italian references is based on the fact that the slow food movement started in Italy; so most of it's leading writers would be writing in Italian. Almost makes me want to enroll in Berlitz to learn Italian. It at least validates the value of my library on regional Italian cooking. But, are these points together really worth the premium $40 list price?

My take on Goldstein's recipes in `The Mediterranean Kitchen' is that since she is much more the chef then she is the scholar like Roden and Wolfert, her recipes tend to be better written and more kitchen savvy, especially when compared to journalist Roden. So, are her recipes still better than average? Good enough for a premium price tag?

Looking at her selection of recipes, I am very happy with the offerings. The chapter on sauces for pasta and polenta includes nineteen (19) recipes, most of which are unfamiliar to me. The familiar recipes are very nice to have around, as this makes the book a nice reference for both familiar and new sauces. I compared Goldstein's `Ragu alla Bolognese' recipe with that from Marcella Hazan's `Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking' and I found several differences, but one which struck me as especially notable. Hazan adds her wine only after adding the milk and reducing it's liquid before adding the wine, specifically to avoid the meat's being infused with an acidic bite from the wine and tomatoes. Goldstein adds wine and tomato paste before adding the milk. I am inclined to prefer Hazan on this recipe based on both the fact that it makes a lot of sense and her position as THE leading authority on Italian recipes. Goldstein does add one interesting note by adding some chopped prosciutto and chopped pancetta to the recipe. This is worth a try.

Otherwise, I had some trouble finding recipes in Hazan to match Goldstein dishes. I consider this a good thing, as it means there is little overlap and you can cheerfully own both books. You will find a lot of overlap in very general categories of recipes. Both books, for example, contain several southern Italian Braciole recipes (rolled meats), but none that duplicate location and primary ingredients. In general, Hazan's recipes are more detailed with more hints. Goldstein's recipes are just a bit less fussy and a bit more modern.

I very much like Goldstein's chapter on vegetable recipes, especially as the modern take on vegetables is to pass them quickly over the heat to just barely remove the edge of rawness before serving. The Italians were never big on raw or undercooked veggies, and Goldstein has given us lots of well cooked and stuffed reds and greens and yellow goodies.

I find it very odd that Goldstein includes no separate recipes for `brodo', no recipes for fresh pasta, and no recipes for bread. These would have fit the premise of her book perfectly. The other side of the coin is that since these things are covered so well in other books, why dilute a book of purely savory recipes with these starches. I still miss the `brodo' recipe. She does provide a perfunctory one as part of a recipe for risotto.

Like `The Mediterranean Kitchen', this book contains wine suggestions which are based heavily on the notion of `terroir' which is an old standard supported by everyone from Wolfert to Mario Batali. Knowing absolutely nothing about wine, I can still recommend these suggestions as they are clear, offer several options including both good, available Italian labels and parallel California offerings. No hoity toity factor at work here!

This is a good book. There are lots of good recipes, very nice wine recommendations, and excellent quick resources on Italian cooking. Whether or not you buy it depends a lot on whether you want to pay the price when you can get Marcella Hazan's authoritative volume for about half with a good discount. A very good but pricy book.