Fagioli: The Bean Cuisine of Italy

Rating:
Summary: A perfectly delightful book of Italian Bean Recipes. Super
Review: `Fagioli' by professional cookbook writer Judith Barrett is quite clearly subtitled `The Bean Cuisine of Italy', as it is all about cooking with Italian beans.

This book immediately succeeds at the first and most important task of a special purpose cookbook in that it has made be really care about and be interested in its subject. It accomplishes this feat first by being a very attractively designed hardcover book with a very well sewn binding which nicely lays flat where you want it to. Next, it's modest artwork and typography complements its presentation so that it is simply a pleasure to read. No eye strain here. Congratulations to the Rodale Press for packaging a very nice volume. Finally, the all the introductory material is accurate to the best of my knowledge. There are no lingering myths about the risks of salting cooking beans, there is no doctrinaire approach to having to soak beans, and there is a tolerance, with warnings, about using a pressure cooker to cook beans, as the sine qua non of bean cookery is like barbecue, `low and slow'. The only hint of elitism I detected was the statement that somehow, the Italians have mastered a secret to a tasty cooking of beans which is beyond we poor New World neophytes who have been cooking beans for less than 400 years. I will concede that the knowledge of good bean cooking is probably a bit harder to find outside of Boston, but I think we have the hang of it.

One of the most liberating revelations was the fact that Italians actually cook a lot with dried beans imported from the New World, as North America exports much more than it consumes, and Italy consumes all it produces, so no dried Italian beans sit on the grocery shelves beyond a year of harvest, especially as date of production is stamped on the bean packages just as we do for bread and milk.

While my hero, Alton Brown has remarked that bean cooking is remarkably uniform, far more consistent across species than with grains, he certainly did not take into account the variety of beans covered by this book, which deals with at least fifteen (15) different species of beans, some of which have no substitutes if the real thing is not available. Fortunately, the unique varieties of beans, the chickpea and the fava are commonly available in the United States. Every other type of bean has more than one commonly available substitution, which is important since there are some beans which are available only in Italy and which do not travel well.

The recipes are organized in exactly the way one would expect from an Italian cookery subject, with chapters on:

Primi Piatti, divided into sections on Antipasti, Insalate, and Contorni (Side Dishes)
Zuppa di Fagioli, divided into sections on Minestre, Zuppe (Thick Soups), and Passali (Creamy Soups)
Pasta e Fagioli, of course
Secondi Piatti, divided into Fagioli e Farinacci (Grains), Fagioli con Carne (Meat), Fagioli con Selvaggina (Poultry), and Fagioli con Pesce (Seafood)

I have never, up until today, been quite clear on the difference between Minestre and Zuppa. I always thought of Minestre as a relatively thick soup, especially as prepared in Florence, for example, but the Tuscan bean soup recipe trumps all visions of soupy thickness by including six different varieties of beans.

This division of recipes does not mean there is no seafood in the salads or antipasti. In fact, the salads include tuna, shrimp, and octopus as co-conspirators in the salad recipes.

This book gives an excellent discussion of non-bean ingredients for its size and does the especially good service of telling us where we can get these ingredients at the same place where their use is discussed. This may not be the best arrangement when we pick up the book later as a reference, but it gives a very good sense of how easy or how hard it is to get some of these things such as bottarga, guanciale, and porcinis.

One could argue that if you have a library full of books by Marcella Hazan, Lydia Bastianich, and a platoon of other Italian cooking writers, what do you need with this book? My first answer is that unlike most general works written for Americans, it tells you what kind of beans are actually used in these recipes. Next, like every special subject book, it is simply a lot easier to find a recipe to fit your need for beans than rummaging through the index of six other books.

As expected from a professional cookbook writer, all the recipes are exceptionally well written and there is a delightful variety in the selection. I cannot guarantee that this book will remove the pasty flavor of beans from your preparations (especially since we have no way of knowing how old our dried beans are), but it will make every effort to do so. The rest is up to you.

Very pleasant, very informative, and very tasty read. Recommended.