Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #172621 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 496 pages

Amazon.com
The Best Recipe series from Cook's Illustrated magazine goes from strength to strength. With its formula of exhaustively tested recipes paired with heavily illustrated techniques, the series makes it easy for even beginning cooks to produce successful dishes almost every time. For the casual home cook, Italian Classics might be the single best Italian cookbook to own. The book is, in classic Best Recipe fashion, a great big beautiful doorstop of a thing. Even so, it's not crammed with arcana. For most Americans--who in survey after survey say that regional Italian is the cuisine they most enjoy cooking at home--the recipes here will be pretty familiar; the space is devoted not to obscure dishes but to exhaustive treatments of favorites. Pesto, for instance, gets about three pages. You end up with a delicious, perfectly prepared basil paste, and along the way you learn how to bruise herb leaves, you get a treatise on why a garlic press isn't such a bad thing (despite what the professionals say), and finally, you are led into the intriguing territory of nonbasil pestos such as Toasted Nut and Parsley, and Arugula and Ricotta. All the classics are here, from red-checkered-tablecloth dishes like Spaghetti and Meatballs to regional dishes like Ribollita. Throughout, there's a nice balance between authenticity and accessibility. The book doesn't call for wildly obscure ingredients that other cookbook authors so often claim can be readily found at "specialty stores," and there's no snobbishly overwrought preparation--another boon for the home cook. --Claire Dederer

Customer Reviews

Excellent Italian reference for American cooks
A passionate home cook that has been honing her cooking skills for the last 25 years, concentrating on Italian cooking for the last 10 years, writes this review. My favorite cookbooks are "The Professional Chef" by the Culinary Institute and "Culinary Artistry". With more than 500 cookbooks in my collection I am usually disappointed in my recent cookbook acquisitions. I am also very tough on Italian cookbooks in particular.

The "Italian Classics" by the editors of Cooks Illustrated Magazine pleasantly surprised me. I expected the typical Italian American recipes that I dislike. This book is much more authentic that I expected it to be. Even as an experienced Italian cook I find it difficult to criticize this book to any large extent.

The editors of Cook's Illustrated write this book in the same manner as their other books. The writers tell you what they tried that didn't work, before they get to the ingredients and techniques that did work. There are very few pictures in this book. The paper is not the glossy stock that you find in my cookbooks today. I would have appreciated if the book had included the Italian names for the recipes. Sometimes they include the Italian name of the recipes in the narrative about the recipe, and sometimes they do not. But, the recipes themselves more make up for these minor disappointments.

The book is outlines as follows:
1. Antipasti
2. Salads
3. Vegetables
4. Soups
5. Pasta
6. Risotto, Polenta, and Bean
7. Poultry
8. Meat
9. Fish and Shellfish
10. Bread and Pizza
11. Eggs and Savory Tarts
12. Fruit Desserts
13. Chilled and Frozen Desserts
14. Biscotti, Crostate, and Cakes

The first recipe that I check out in any Italian cookbook to gauge its authenticity is Spaghetti Carbonara. If this recipe has cream included the book is immediately put back on the shelf. Unexpectedly, the recipe is this book does not add the cream, as American books tend to do. As I looked further, I realized that the authors tried to make each recipe as authentic as possible. The reason for the qualifier is that it is always not possible to make a recipe 100% authentic. I for one have never found an American supplier of Guanciale (cured pig's cheek), and Farro is also tough to come by. The writers did a very nice job substituting products that are easier to locate in the US.

If you are in need of comprehensive and reasonably authentic Italian cookbook, this will make a nice addition to your cookbook collection.

My favorite cuisine-specific book
Cooks Illustrated did an excellent job with this book. It is an invaluable reference to me because my knowledge of Italian fare is limited. True to form, CI takes the guesswork out of making the recipes and provides valid reasons why not to stray. If you are unfamiliar with CI methodology, each recipe comes with a background information regarding the failed tests that lead to the creation of the recipe. If you are not interested in this type of background, the recipes are still great so just skip the added info.

I really enjoy the tasting and equipment ratings that have been incorporated into the book. This is not an all-day recipe type of book. CI balances time with flavor. Many of the recipes can be used for weeknight meals and certainly for weekends.

My favorite pasta sauce recipes are from this book. They turn out perfectly every time.

Better than average reference for Italian dishes.
'Italian Classics' is a 'Cooks Illustrated' treatment of well known Italian recipes. I have reviewed a number of similar 'Cooks Illustrated' books and a fabulous number of Italian cookbooks, and I believe that this volume is both better than the average 'Cooks Illustrated' volume AND better than the average Italian cookbook.

Part of the value of this book is not due to the efforts of the 'Cooks Illustrated' staff, it is due to their applying their usual approach to a body of recipes which are well established and about which there is a great body of writing already available in English.

That means that when they evaluate a pasta Puttanesca recipe, there is little chance they will be going wrong, as they have the writings of Marcella Hazan, Lydia Bastianich, Mario Batalli, Giuliano Bugialli, and Michelle Scicolone to proof their researches against.

This is not to say that they sometimes go off the deep end of fussiness, as when they suggest parboiling the garlic in the pan before adding the oil and other ingredients so as to not burn the garlic when starting out on their Puttanesca.

Still, I am always guaranteed of seeing a highly reliable recipe for the Italian standards in this volume and while I have multiple volumes written by all those other authors, I still refer to this book first every time I want to do meatballs or lasagna or gnocchi or osso bucco.

Recommended for people who like to cook Italian.