Italian Farmhouse Cookbook

Rating:
Summary: Yes, cookbooks are about recipes ...
Review: I am a cook, not a poser. I don't buy cookbooks because they look good on my coffee table. I buy cookbooks because the recipes intrigue me, and I want to learn more about a particular style of cooking. Who cares what fonts are used, as long as they're readable? Who cares if the illustrations are simplistic? It's called "The Italian FARMHOUSE Cookbook." If a book that purports to be about rustic Italian cooking had the same look and feel of Thomas Keller's ultra-sleek French Laundry Cookbook, I'd be concerned. The same way I'd be concerned if I walked into a local osteria in some gorgeous, dripping-with-age-and-charm rustic Italian town and saw track lighting. This book states -- proudly -- that it is about the simplicities of Italian food, and brings to the fore the kind of inside information that only an author who has walked the walk can know. If you want slick photographs and pretentious food, the titles of which that take almost as long to pronounce as the dish takes to be prepared, go elsewhere. If you've recently read "Under the Tuscan Sun" and wish you could have joined Frances Mayes in her kitchen, this just might be the next best thing.

Rating:
Summary: Am I ever glad I bought this cook book !
Review: I recently purchased the Italian Farmhouse Cookbook, after reading five reviews listed here on Amazon! Since four of the five were extremely complimentary, and one very negative, I with only slight hesitation ordered the book.....

Am I ever glad I did! Obviously the negative review (from a reader supposedly in New York) was totally inappropriate and wrong! This cook book is fantastic!

I love Thai, Italian, and Mexican cooking (particularly low fat versions) and have a library of over 50 of the best cook books I could find. At the time I ordered this book, I also purchased a "famous" large format Italian cookbook, with large color pictures of each recipe item, and gorgeous pictures of the Italian countryside.

But Loomis' book is superior to that or any other Italian cookbook I've seen. If you demand glossy color pictures of Italy, don't buy this cook book! But if you want to actually FEEL as though you know the best Italian cooking and what the factors and feelings are in creating it, then buy it.

The recipes are astoundingly good and the writing is wonderful. Her descriptions of the people and cooks she encountered on her journey through the Italian countryside are wonderful and her recipes are the same. The author's fine writing style, along with the wisdom and authentic cooking ideas she gathered on her visits to various homes, provide such a strong foundation for the beautiful recipes themselves.

This is a "must have" Italian cookbook, no question about it!

Rating:
Summary: If I Were A Green Bean....
Review: If I were a green bean willing to sacrifice myself for someone's dinner, I'd hope that they read Susan Hermann Loomis' Italian Farmhouse Cookbook and prepared me as 'Green Beans with Tomatoes' with fresh sage, olive oil, and garlic.

We had Loomis' green beans tonight along with 'Chicken with Lemon Rosemary Salt.' Last night we had her 'Red Onion Pizza' which is made with the best homemade pizza dough that I've found anywhere.

If you're looking for a good Italian cookbook with simple recipes and easy prep this is it.

Mark this one KEEPER.

Rating:
Summary: Condiments and pizza dough are worth every penny
Review: If you are interested in "real" Italian food from the farmhouses or peasant kitchens around Italy you will find this cookbook a great reference tool. It is evident that Susan Herrmann Loomis spent a great deal of time researching the recipes and culinary history while writing this book. As the Italian Food Host at BellaOnline and an avid cookbook collector of anything related to Italian cuisine, I would highly recommend this book for someone collecting Italian cookbooks. If it were your first Italian cookbook however I would encourage you to do more research. The one glaring negative of this book was that it did not have a single food photo. I can't imagine that in this day and age that publishers have not figured out that great food photos sell cookbooks!

Rating:
Summary: Another reading and cooking treat
Review: If you're an armchair traveler and want to know about a place as well as cook its food, BUY THIS BOOK. Most of the recipes are for simple, cook-able food and you'll find yourself pretending that you're in Tuscany during the dinner hour. Her little "segreti" (like the "astuces" in the French Farmhouse Cookbook) are invaluable, and she has such a friendly style of writing that you will sometimes find it a hard choice as to whether to cook a meal or keep on reading. My 14-year-old son loves this book too -- he's made the Red Berry Sorbet and it came out great. Warning: since so many of the recipes depend on fresh, seasonal produce, you'll find it hard to be happy with Safeway produce. But that's a good thing. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: WOW!!!
Review: Recently, I acquired Susan Loomis' new cook book Italian Farmhouse Cooking. One day, on a boring Sunday afternoon, I was sitting at the dining room table thinking. Directly in front of me was this wonderful cookbook. I picked it up, having nothing better to do, and began to flip through the pages. The more I read, the more intrigued I became. Not only did it have new, unique foods that I had never even could have fathomed could be made so easily; it had interesting stories of the famous Italian culture. As I sat there, reading the short essays, I got the feeling that I had been put into Italy, enjoying food and culture with all of them. I rode the train up the mountain, and I tasted the wonderful taste of great antipastos and such. This book is certainly a must buy for all enthusiastic cookers, for true cooking cannot be found in the recipe; it can only be found in the culture.

Rating:
Summary: Anxiously Awaiting
Review: The 11th Reviewer of the Italian Farmhouse Cookbook is such
a naysayer! I've been 'eyeing' this cookbook for the past year
and I can't wait to get my ovenmitts on it!
As another Reviewer said, 'this is a FARMHOUSE cookbook';
recipes made by REAL people and recipes meant to be used, instead
of merely looked at on the coffee table.



Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Foodie Read on Italian Country Cuisine
Review: The `Italian Farmhouse Cookbook' by Susan Hermann Loomis is part of a three (3) book series of farmhouse recipe books covering France and the US as well as Italy. My first and most important caution to the prospective buyer is that if all you want is a book of Italian recipes, there are easily a hundred or more books that would better fill that need. Ms. Loomis books are very good, but they are as much or more for readers and foodies as they are for cooks. At least a third of the text in this book gives background on Italian farmers, their life, and their produce. A second reason for this caution is based on an observation I saw in `The Medieval Kitchen' which points out that in the 15th century, city cooking was much more interesting than country cooking, as major urban trading centers had both access to foreign products and a nobility which encouraged creative cooking. Lest you think much has probably changed in the last 500 years, Ms. Loomis' book itself states that Italian country cooking was, until very recently, limited by poor roads and limited trade.

This is not to say this is not a good book. In fact, for travelers who may have an interest in visiting rural Italy, it is an excellent book. It is also excellent in giving a picture of rural agriculture in Italy over the last 100 years. It is quite surprising how recently the Italian peasant has been freed from a crippling economic serfdom by both the national Italian government and the European Economic Community centered in Brussels. All sorts of things that new foodies assume have been around for centuries such as fine Italian wines, dried pasta, high quality olive oil, and grappa comparable to French cognac are actually very recent developments. One can easily get the wrong impression from the age of other products such as Parmesano-Reggiano and prosciutto de Parma that Italy has always been the culinary dynamo it is today.

I must say the recipes in this book are very good and very typically Italian. The surest symptom of an Italian style recipe is when one wonders that you need a recipe at all to make the dish. Just as I marvel at the utter simplicity of Italian influenced recipes from London's River Café and Jamie Oliver, most of the recipes in this book are based on simplicity itself. Even better, there is very little use of premium ingredients such as truffles and balsamic vinegar. On the other hand, I am a little puzzled at how few recipes there are featuring wild mushrooms and wild greens such as dandelion and nettles. There are a fair number of recipes for game such as guinea hens and wild boar. This is great for the accuracy of the book's picture of Italian rural cuisine, but it does not add a lot to the count of recipes useable by a foodie in suburban Newark.

I am especially pleased that the book covers the full range of Italian regions from Friuli to Sicily to Sardinia. I am especially pleased to see a recipe for the traditional Sardinian flatbread. This recipe plus a few others may be worth the price of admission, as it is an easy preparation that requires no fussing with yeast or any other leaveners.

The subjects of the recipe chapters follow a very traditional Italian model based on courses. The chapter titles are:

Appetizers and Snacks, including sidebars on Buffalo mozzarella and Italian organic farming.
Salads, including sidebars on Balsamic Vinegar and capers.
Soups, both Minestre and zuppa.
First Courses, including sidebars on Parmigiano-Reggiano and rice farming.
Second courses, primarily lamb, pork, poultry, rabbit, and boar.
The Vegetable Garden, including sidebars on grappa, organic farming, and peppers.
From the Bread Oven. Not a lot, as the Italians, like the French, typically bought bread from the baker.
Sweet, Sweet, with fruit, nut cakes, fruit tarts, and marmalades.
The Pantry, or what to keep on hand to whip up fast meals.
The basics, or how to make brodo and doughs.

This is the kind of cookbook you read in bed at night to better understand a major world cuisine and get ideas for improvisations based on the Italian style of cooking. The paperback is simply not up to the rigors of standing open on the kitchen table.

This is an excellent background book to accompany more systematic treatments of Italian cuisine such as the excellent books by Marcella Hazan, Lydia Bastianich, and Giuliano Bugialli.