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Stir: Mixing It Up in the Italian Tradition by Barbara Lynch
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Barbara Lynch Photographer: Deborah Jones Contributor: Joanne Smart Edition: Hardcover Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2009-11-02 ISBN: 0618576819 Number of pages: 352 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Book Reviews of Stir: Mixing It Up in the Italian TraditionBook Review: Entertaining, Unpretentious and Yummy Summary: 5 Stars
I got this book about a week and a half ago, and I like it so much that I've been lugging it around the house like a security blanket. I bought it in the first place because I ate at one of Lynch's restaurants. It seemed worthwhile to pay for the chance of recreating those gnocchi at home. Lynch is very generous with her most popular recipes - she gives up the secrets to a best-selling bolognese sauce, the gnocchi that every single reviewer of Sportello raves about, and the dish that pretty much made No. 9 Park famous. The recipes run the full cycle of seasonality, and many can be dressed up or down as you like. (Some are harder to dress down, but it seems that the key to dressing a lot of food up is serving it in small containers.)
Some of these recipes are very simple. The gorgonzola fondue isn't a whole lot more than melted cheese. The marinara sauce can be thrown together out of kitchen staples in under half an hour. A number of the soups (particularly the white bean and hazelnut and the spicy tomato) look interesting and uncomplicated. Tomato jam and tomato confit are on my experiment list for tomato season. Some of these recipes, by contrast, look like they would take a few hours a day for most of a week for a home cook to construct. Lynch likes olives more than I do, but she's the kind of cook who makes me wonder if maybe I'm just wrong about olives. She uses a lot more fat than I do, but I can see ways to trim it.
Best of all, Lynch has a charming willingness to draw back the curtain and expose the machinery of her work to the reader. Some of the recipes come neatly apart into building blocks for other recipes (the chicken soup could be a weekend lunch with whatever vegetables you have on hand thrown in), and she includes a few actual building block recipes (homemade pasta, chicken stock, tomato confit, cooked white beans, homemade ricotta). In many places, you have the option of using store-bought ingredients or making your own. The recipes are easy to follow: the results may look intimidating, but the instructions don't.
I think it is unlikely that I will ever make prune-stuffed gnocchi with foie gras sauce, but the chances have increased by an order of magnitude since this time last week, so who knows what will happen.
Summary of Stir: Mixing It Up in the Italian TraditionProduct Description Although Barbara Lynch was born and raised in South Boston, not Tuscany, many critics believe her food rivals the best of Italy. It has been praised by Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, and Gourmet, and many more. Lynch's cuisine is all the more remarkable because it is self-taught. In a story straight out of Good Will Hunting, she grew up in the turbulent projects of "Southie", where petty crime was the only viable way to make a living. But in a home ec class in high school, she discovered her passion. Through a mix of hunger for knowledge, hard work, and raw smarts, she gradually created her own distinctive style of cooking, mining Italian and French classics for ideas and seasoning them with imagination. The 150 recipes in Stir combine sophistication with practicality. Appetizers like baked tomatoes and cheese and crisp, buttery brioche pizzas. Dozens of the artful pastas Lynch is famous for, such as little lasagnas with chicken meatballs, and potato gnocchi with peas and mushrooms. Lobster rolls with aoli. Chicken wrapped in prosciutto and stuffed with melting Italian cheese. Creamy vanilla bread pudding with caramel sauce. Accompanied by Lynch's forthright opinions and stunning four-color photographs, these dishes will create a stir on home tables. Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Barbara Lynch Dear Amazon Reader, Growing up in public housing in a tough neighborhood in Boston, I couldn't afford culinary school. Cookbooks like Waverly Root's The Food of Italy not only taught me about new ingredients and techniques but were an escape. (They also helped me bluff my way through my first cooking job.) Now I get to do what I love best: making people happy by feeding them really delicious food. In Stir, I share my passion and my hard-earned knowledge. And of course, I give you my recipes, which the regulars in my restaurants have been clamoring for over the years. Some are almost embarrassingly easy, like Gorgonzola Fondue, Baked Cheese and Tomatoes, and Slow-Roasted Beef Tenderloin with Thyme. Others are a little more involved but oh-so-worth-it, like Chicken and Vegetable Soup with Caraway Gnocchi. There's plenty of weekday cooking, including Green Bean and Seared Shrimp Salad with Spicy Curry Sauce, which I eat all the time, and Lemony Breaded Chicken Cutlets, which my daughter Marchesa loves. Then there are my pastas, which are my very favorite things, such as Chicken Meatball Lasagnettes (a favorite of Julia Child's) and sauces that pair well with both fresh and dried pasta, such as my signature Bolognese (I share my secret ingredient). All of my recipes are written with the home cook in mind and so are full of the details that make a difference. I hope Stir will inspire you. Enjoy!
Barbara Lynch (Photo © Justin Ide) Recipe Excerpts from Stir  Roasted Fennel and Green Beans |  Butcher Shop Bolognese |  Creamy Vanilla Bread Pudding |
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