Product Description

Italians are passionate about their food and love to celebrate together. At annual village festivals the food is cooked in mammoth proportions, the cobblestone streets become jammed with costumed processions and happy crowds sit and enjoy a communal meal that is a ritual of connection and neighborly love.

In Celebrating Italy, Carol Field takes the reader to these exuberant civic feasts and highlights their very special and ancient recipes. The result is one of the most remarkable cookbooks ever written, for in exploring festivals, Field has opened a bright new window on Italian culture and its sumptuous food.

Recipes include the victory dinner of Risotto Fratacchione -- red onions and sausages eaten after Siena's famous Palio; the Sorbir d'Agnoli -- stuffed pasta in wine-spiked broth that the Mantuans eat on Christmas Day, and Pane di Cena's sweet milk bread rolls, which is made to last all through Easter Week in Sicily.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #754472 in Books
• Published on: 1997-05-21
• Released on: 1997-04-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In this encyclopedic effort, IACP/Tastemaker Award-winner Field ( The Italian Baker ) takes readers on a fascinating culinary tour: a trip through Italy that in form is part guidebook, part cookbook and "culinary archaeology" at its best. Her Italy is a place of fairs, festivals,stet and historic and religious hoopla that transform the mundane into the magical: "Festivals are a form of communion . . . not only for Italians but for Americans who happen upon them." Almost invariably, festivals are gastronomically obsessed, "tied to the calendar and to the countryside." Field lures the reader to feasts of seafood, polenta, rice,stet and strawberries--even a Passover seder in Rome. And, from Tuscan grape harvest sweetbread (schiacciata all'uva)sic to creamy pumpkin-flavored rice (riso e zucca)sic and a Christmas soup of bread and cheese (li straccettisic ), she presents a host of unusual recipes. While they are organized by celebration, many are also incorporated into the author's modern menu suggestions. BOMC HomeStyle main selection; author tour.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This fascinating new work from the author of the well-regarded The Italian Baker ( LJ 11/15/85) combines cultural history, folklore, and food, as Field explores some of the more unusual festivals that take place every year in Italy. These celebrate religious holidays, individual cities, pagan traditions, or, often, food: the Fair of Pecorino Cheese, the Gnocchi Bacchanalia. Regardless of the occasion, however, each has its special dishes. Field's lengthy descriptions of the festivals provide an intimate view of the proceedings, and her recipes include many unusual regional specialties and, not surprisingly, a wide array of delicious breads and pastries. Recommended for travel, folklore, and cookery collections.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Carol Field is one of Americas most successful and admired food writers. She lives in San Francisco, CA.

Customer Reviews

This is a wonderful way to learn about Italy...
I bought this book from Amazon.com because of its title alone but was so easily assimilated into Carol's amazing talent of recreating events with the written word that I found it difficult to put down. She put me right IN the festival! Because I live in Italy I have been able to visit a good number of the festivals that she describes in this book and have found her descriptions to be so accurate as to be scary. She seems to have found a way to penetrate the soul of these manifestations in a manner that not even many Italians can do.

I praise this not as a cookbook or a collection of recipes, but as a literary work that can be taken seriously as a 'training manual' on the spirit of Italian celebration. I recommend it to anyone who harbors a love of Italy and wants to know more about its inner being...

Not Just A Cookbook
Carol Field's Celebrating Italy is as much an Italian cultural reference book as it is a cookbook. I loved reading through all the different holidays celebrated in Italy complete with traditional recipes. Having lived in Italy for 8 years myself, Carol's stories made me long for a return trip.. Being the Italian Cooking Host @ Bella Online I found the recipes true to their cultural origins, but yet given with clear, easy to follow directions. If you are as fascinated with Italian cuisine as I am, you'll love this book!

EATS-A-GOOD BOOK!
This book is full of everything that makes being alive(not to mention being ITALIAN) so wonderful...! Traditions, recipes, slices from everyday ife that make you feel the "specialness" of every single day. Carol's research and her love shine through in CELEBRATING ITALY, so much so, be prepared to take a trip to one of the small towns she describes so mouth-wateringly delicious! Carol made me hungry for tradition, hungry to go back to things I always cherished in my heart. Can't wait for your next book, Carol! Con Amore, Terry Stellini