1,000 Italian Recipes (1,000 Recipes)
by Michele Scicolone
List Price:
Our Price: $19.70
You Save: $15.30 (44%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $7.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Michele ScicoloneEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-10-08
ISBN: 0764566768
Number of pages: 672
Publisher: Wiley
Product features:
- cookbook,book,Italian cookbook,italian recipes
Book Reviews of 1,000 Italian Recipes (1,000 Recipes)
Book Review: A cookbook you must keep in your kitchen. Buy it!
Summary: 5 Stars
`1000 Italian Recipes' by Michele Scicolone is a great idea which, in other hands applied to other cuisines has produced heavy books with little or no inspiration. Ms. Scicolone has done this right. She has done it so right that it ups the ante for all new general Italian cuisine cookbooks to justify why one would want an alternate book when this excellent volume is already in your library.
The first thing which strikes the reader is the Table of Contents, which shows that Ms. Scicolone has a chapter on virtually every major category of Italian cooking, and, the Contents are divided into detailed subjects so that we don't only have a chapter on Antipasti, we have an Antipasti chapter plus sections on Cheese, Vegetable, Egg, Meat, Seafood, Dips, Bruschetta, and Fried Antipasti.
While this book makes no claims to being a work on regional Italian cuisine, it pays great attention to regionality. For starters, the end papers display excellent little maps of Italy and its twenty primary provinces. It is probably entirely excessive on my part, but a few more cities marked on the map would have been nice, but it is so much better than what you get in most other books that cite Italian regions that I am very pleased with this feature. The map is validated by the fact that the headnotes to most of the recipes cite the region to which the dish is native. Among other things, it fixes for certain that potato gnocchi is a speciality of Rome, and that it is the premier gnocchi recipe for Rome's Thursday menus.
This highlights the fact that in such a large book, you get not one gnocchi recipe. You don't even get just one potato gnocchi recipe. You get it neat, with lamb ragu, gratineed, with spinach, with seafood, and Sorrento style (with marinara sauce and mozzarella). You also get gnocchi made with squash and made with semolina. I do miss a recipe for gnocchi made with ricotta. And, these are not bare bones recipes. Potato gnocchi, like an omelet, is a relatively easy recipe with simple ingredients. But, both recipes require a lot of technique and gnocchi excellence comes only with practice. I think no amount of reading gnocchi recipes or even marathon sessions watching `Molto Mario' will make you a good gnocchi cook. You need to feel the dough and experiment with it to be sure it is just right. Here we get another symptom of how good this book is. I have read a lot of gnocchi recipes, and this is the first where I recall the writer's providing a really good test to tell when the potato gnocchi is good to go. Everyone tells you to be gentle and not add too much flour. This is the first I recall seeing a method for test cooking a gnocchi dumpling to see if you are good to go.
We see the same story with just about every type of recipe. It is no surprise to see a Pasta Puttanesca recipe. It is a surprise to see the traditional cooked Puttanesca plus an uncooked version of Puttanesca.
Another small feature that builds on all the other good things about this book is the fact that the Italian name is given for every recipe. This may not seem very important to the person who just happens to want a single very good source of Italian recipes, but to someone who owns twenty (20) recipes of Italian cuisine, the feature becomes very important in being able to compare two different versions of the same recipe where two authors may translate the traditional Italian name in two different ways. This simple consideration extends to names of classic preparations, lead by the distinction between a ragu (a meat sauce, as in Ragu Bolognaise) and a sugo, or thinner, meatless sauce. This legitimate distinction is probably the basis of the totally inconsequential Italian-American argument over `sauce' versus `gravy'.
The author is fairly clear that her recipes are based on Italian models, not Italian-American adaptations. This is fine, since there are plenty of excellent Italian-American cookbooks on our shelves now. She does note that she has leaned towards the modern Italian tendency to prefer olive oil to butter or lard in all recipes and she has catered to the American preference for lightly cooked vegetables, instead of hammering the green stuff the way most traditional Italians did in the past.
While Ms. Scicolone has wisely not entitled her book `Complete Italian Recipes', there are precious few subjects she has not given some reasonable treatment, including a very instructive section on making fresh pasta and sections on traditional breads, pizzas, and calzones. I'm especially pleased that she found room for a recipe for the Sardinian `sheet music' flat bread. Something so unusual needs to be in such a complete book. But, here is where we get the gaps that are filled by the grand dames of Italian cookbook writing such as Marcella Hazan, Lydia Bastianich, and Carole Field. Marcella and Lydia both have large chapters devoted to making fresh pasta, with excellent pictures to explain the techniques. And, Ms. Scicolone does not compete with Carole Field's excellent book on Italian bread baking, since it does not even touch the subject of artisinal baking. I would have not missed the bread recipes one bit if Ms. Scicolone had devoted some of this space to more Panini recipes. As the cuisine which has contributed most to the American sandwich, a few more Panini recipes and a bit more on the Panini press would have been a great addition. I am a dunce with wines, but I think the short chapter on Italian wines adds much to the book by supplying lots of useful information into a few pages.
While book cover blurbs are often political, I heartily agree with Mario Batali's epigram that this book is a masterpiece, easily a candidate for one of the ten cookbooks you keep in your kitchen.
Summary of 1,000 Italian Recipes (1,000 Recipes)
It's Like Getting 5 Cookbooks in 1* 179 Pastas and Sauces
* 241 Meat, Poultry, and Fish Entrees
* 158 Vegetable Dishes
* 179 Desserts
* And Much More!
CELEBRATE ITALIAN COOKING with this authoritative and engaging tribute. Author Michele Scicolone offers simple recipes for delicious classics such as lasagne, minestrone, chicken cutlets, and gelato, plus many more of your favorites; a wealth of modern dishes, such as grilled scallop salad; and a traveler's odyssey of regional specialties from the northern hills of Piedmont to the sun-drenched islands of Sicily and Sardinia. Whether giving expert advice on making a frittata or risotto, selecting Italian ingredients, or pairing Italian wines with food, Scicolone enlivens each page with rich details of Italian food traditions. This book is a treasury to turn to for any occasion.
Praise for 1,000 Italian Recipes
"Michele Scicolone has written the best all-encompassing Italian cookbook to hit the shelves in years. Her recipes are accessible and beautifully written, and the result is a masterpiece of traditional and nontraditional Italian cookery. This tome is pure inspiration."
-Mario Batali, Chef/Owner of Babbo, Lupa, Esca, Otto, and Casa Mono (New York), and host of Food Network's Molto Mario
"The broad range of recipes and wealth of information on Italian food found in 1,000 Italian Recipes confirms why Michele Scicolone was the only chef we would go to when we wanted to do our Sopranos Family Cookbook."
-David Chase, Creator/Executive Producer,The Sopranos
"A must-have for any serious Italian cook."
-Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, Chef, Restaurateur, Cookbook Author, and Host of PBS's Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen
Italian Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Italian Books
Nick stellino's glorious italian cookingby Nick Stellino
Putnam Adult; Published: 1996-04-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $16.13
Price in other shops:
Fresh Ways with Italian Cookingby Sunset Books
Sunset Publishing Corporation; Published: 1992-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.89
Price in other shops:
Italian Vegetarian Cookery Pbby Gavin Paola
Optima; Published: 1991-06-13; Paperback; Book
Ciao Italia Five-Ingredient Favorites: Quick and Delicious Recipes from an Italian Kitchenby Mary Ann Esposito
St. Martin's Press; Published: 2009-09-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops:
Ciao Italia Pronto!: 30-Minute Recipes from an Italian Kitchenby Mary Ann Esposito
St. Martin's Press; Published: 2005-10-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.43
Price in other shops:
Italia! Italia! A Passion for the Real Food of Italyby Valentina Harris
Sterling*+ Publishing Company; Published: 1999-09-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.30
Un Amico Italiano: Eat, Pray, Love in Romeby Luca Spaghetti
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2011-04-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Italian Food (Penguin handbooks)by Elizabeth David
Penguin; Published: 1964-02-28; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
A Casa: Seasonal Italian Home Cookingby Anna Del Conte
Harpercollins; Published: 1992-09; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.19
Price in other shops:
Bologna Mia: Memories from the Kitchen of Italyby Loretta Paganini
Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin's Press; Published: 2000-10-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $41.25
Similar Books and other products
The Glorious Pasta of Italyby Domenica Marchetti
Chronicle Books; Published: 2011-05-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.00
Price in other shops:
Sweet Maria's Italian Cookie Tray: A Cookbookby Maria Bruscino Sanchez
St. Martin's Griffin; Published: 1997-07-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.60
Price in other shops:
The North End Italian Cookbook, 5thby Marguerite DiMino Buonopane
Globe Pequot; Published: 2004-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.31
Price in other shops:
The Italian Farmer's Table: Authentic Recipes and Local Lore from Northern Italyby Matthew Scialabba, Melissa Pellegrino
Three Forks; Published: 2009-11-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.09
Price in other shops:
Cooking with Italian Grandmothers: Recipes and Stories from Tuscany to Sicilyby Jessica Theroux
Welcome Books; Published: 2010-09-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $24.25
Price in other shops:
The French Slow Cookerby Michele Scicolone
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 2012-01-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.44
Price in other shops:
1,000 Mexican Recipes (1,000 Recipes)by Marge Poore
Wiley; Published: 2001-09-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.89
Price in other shops:
Every Night Italian: 120 Simple, Delicious Recipes You Can Make in 45 Minutes or Lessby Giuliano Hazan
Scribner; Published: 2000-01-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.49
Price in other shops:
Essentials of Classic Italian Cookingby Marcella Hazan
Alfred A. Knopf; Published: 1992-10-27; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $17.25
Price in other shops:
The Italian Slow Cookerby Michele Scicolone
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 2010-01-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.85
Price in other shops: