Product Description

If you dream of Italy -- and who does not? -- be prepared to fall in love with this extraordinary cookbook. Written by Lynne Rossetto Kasper, author of The Splendid Table: Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food (winner of both the James Beard and Julia Child/IACP Cookbook-of-the-Year Awards), it is every bit the equal of its celebrated predecessor.

Read its exuberant pages, eat its lusty dishes, and you enter a landscape vibrant with rural life. You are one with the terrain. In some sense, you are home. That, of course, is the miracle of Italy -- no matter where we come from, we want to be a part of it. And the miracle of The Italian Country Table is its ability to take us there.

And what a journey! You will never be as impatient to get into your kitchen as when you are planning a meal from this book. Two hundred recipes, personally collected from home cooks throughout the length and breadth of Italy, will keep calling you back.

Who could resist the "Gatto" di Patate, a mashed-potato "lasagne" from the Neapolitan countryside? Or a Tuscan Mountain Supper of warm beans tossed with an herbed tomato sauce and eaten with tart greens? Or Pasta of the Grape Harvest, a Sicilian dish of grapes, red wine, orange zest, spices, pistachios and linguine? Or Chocolate Polenta Pudding Cake?

Kasper, host of Public Radio's The Splendid Table, is a master teacher who thinks about cooking in a way that is radically distinctive. Her chapter on tomatoes and tomato sauces, a treasure by itself, will change the way you think about them -- and cook them -- forever. Her guide to buying and saucing pasta contains more useful facts than many books that devote themselves to pasta exclusively.

Kasper, the grandchild of Italian immigrants, describes herself as someone with a love of lingering "in places where life changes slowly." This personal book abounds with stories of artisans, farmers and family. It is a portrait of Italian country life.

Where you read The Italian Country Table, cook from it or use it to plan a trip (there is an appendix that lists guest farms, country hotels, restaurants and museums), you have only to turn its pages to be transported to a rustic Italy that few of us know, but all of us long for.

* 16 pages of finished dishes in full color

* 50 black-and-white photographs of country life

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32843 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

Amazon.com
Lynne Rossetto Kasper's authoritative first book, The Splendid Table, explored the food and culture of Emilia-Romagna, Italy's culinary heartland. In The Italian Country Table, a collection of 200 regional recipes gathered from farmhouse cooks, Kasper once again provides cultural investigation and authentic, workable recipes. The resulting cookbook-cum-chronicle will appeal to anyone seeking delicious, down-to-earth dishes and an introduction to cherished culinary traditions.

Covering every course of an Italian meal--from antipasti through pasta to vegetables and, of course, dessert--the book weaves recipes with vignettes exploring, for example, Puglia's ritual drying of winter tomatoes. Included also are notes on buying tips, special cooking techniques such as glazing, and discussions of culinary moment, like the nature of a true risotto Milanese. The immediately inviting recipes include such temptations as Mushrooms Stuffed with Radicchio and Asiago, Hot and Spicy Eggplant Soup, Leg of Lamb Glazed with Balsamic and Red Wine, and Espresso Ricotta Cream with Espresso Chocolate Sauce. Kasper also offers a chapter on focaccia, pizza, and bread, as well as menus, shopping sources, and a useful discussion of ingredients. (Taste before you buy, and then pause, she advises. "Aftertaste can reveal how a food's been stored, careless production, or foods going from mature to over the hill.") Concluding with a guide to Italian guest farms, folk life museums, and places to eat and shop, the book is a comprehensive introduction to basic but inspired home cooking and the traditions that both contain and nurture it. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
With this equally successful follow-up, Kasper proves that her first cookbook, The Splendid Table (which won awards from both James Beard and the IACP), was no fluke. The recipes here are collected from home cooks living in the Italian countrysideAmany of them on working farms. While most of the recipes are simple, Kasper never rests on her laurels by offering an already-familiar formula. Her Tomato-Mozzarella Salad with Pine Nuts and Basil is enhanced with red onion and currants. These are satisfying dishes, and most of them can be assembled quickly, like Seafood Saut? with Stubby Pasta and Spaghettini with Shrimp, Chickpeas and Young Greens. Flavors are never timid: Hot-and-Spicy Eggplant Soup packs a punch with chilies that marry interestingly with fresh mint; and gutsy Sweet-Sour Meatballs for St. Joseph's Day contain cinnamon and candied citron. Italian "home" desserts are satisfying and unfussy: Chocolate Polenta Pudding Cake and Iced Summer Peaches. In addition to concocting tight, clear recipes, Kasper writes beautiful prose. Even recipe headersAwhich include sensible "Cook to Cook" notes containing special tipsAare carefully crafted. Unobtrusive wine suggestions for most dishes are a bonus. Few American writers "get" Italy this clearly; fewer still can communicate their knowledge so smartly. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Author of the Italian cookbook, THE SPLENDID TABLE, Kasper also hosts a radio program about cooking. Her comfort with the spoken word is evident in this collection of essays and short pieces, which elaborate the recipes in her cookbook, THE ITALIAN COUNTRY TABLE. Between snatches of cheerful accordion music, Kasper entertains us with stories of cooking polenta, the resilience of perfect pasta, and the taste of fresh, sweet ricotta. She reads her stories with the exuberance of a gourmand just returned from an Italian trip-of-a-lifetime. The package includes a short Italian lesson, giving listeners no excuse to stay home. Altogether a delicious experience. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Loving it!
I have been carrying this book around with me for several days, opening and reading at every opportunity. This is a friendly cookbook. I didn't need another cookbook, I told myself! But I'm delighted to have ignored my own advice. There is so much diversity and variety to absorb in these pages, and it reads with a beautiful flavor. Full of tips and enthusiasm, just like her radio program, Splendid Table. I have used Post-It "flags" in abundance to remind me to try out selected recipes.

not a bad dish yet
I have had this book for years, and I have yet to make something out of it that hasn't been delicious. This one is a staple on the cookbook shelf.
I've lived in Italy for a total of about 1.5 years (off and on), and this book really captures the flavors of "real" Italian food.

I wanted to like it ...
Let me preface this by saying that I love listening to The Splendid Table and I think Ms. Kasper is fantastic. She obviously loves Italian food and she's done a lot to teach folks how to cook it properly. I enjoy reading the little vignettes which accompany so many of the recipes and all of her recipes sound delicious (at least by looking at the ingredient list).

That being said, I unfortunately found The Italian Country Table to be overly complicated and fussy at times. Sometimes her techniques are legitimate (for example, her technique for polenta -- long but worth it). Many times, however, they are not (in my humble opinion). Every time I want to cook something from this book, I am discouraged by something starting with, "Mince together 1 onion, 1/2 cup of parsley, 4 sages leaves and a slice of pancetta." Even to me, an avid cook, this is too much trouble. I agree that rolling your own pasta is the gold standard but for working stiffs such as myself, how about some reasonable alternatives such as buying fresh pasta and putting it through the machine a few times?

Disclaimers: I have been spoiled by "Red, White and Greens" by Faith Willinger, which was my first primer to Italian food. All of her recipes are easy and almost all of them are delicious. Also - I am vegetarian so I can only comment on the vegetable and grain dishes in this book, which perhaps are not its strong point.

Again, I still want to like this book -- In fact, I am trying the Tuscan Mountain Supper tonight!