Description:
A passion for Italian home cooking (or cucina di casa, as she might tell us) has led Norma Wasserman-Miller from Risotto, which she cowrote, to zuppa. Soups of Italy is Wasserman-Miller's paean to the comforting first course that is often served twice a day in Italian homes. Rather than focusing on one region, she surveys all of Italy, showing the great difference, for example, between minestrone recipes from Milan, Naples, and Sicily. The book starts with a brief culinary history of soups in Italy (in the Middle Ages, the nobility were warned against eating this peasant cuisine!), followed by a lengthy introduction to soup techniques and more than 130 recipes, which are handily categorized by main ingredient. Some readers may find Wasserman-Miller's heavy use of the Italian names for techniques and ingredients a bit off-putting. (For example, it's difficult to discern that the sapori and the passatelli are one and the same thing in her Minestra di Passatelli without knowing a bit of Italian.) Nevertheless, the recipes are authentic and the author has taken pains to help her audience recreate the Italian flavors at home. Soups of Italy is a delightful guidebook for cooks anxious to try their hand at simple Italian cooking found not in restaurants, but in everyday kitchens throughout the country.
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