Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

http://fourcooksonebook.blogspot.ca/2014_01_01_archive.html

Perhaps the recipes themselves fall victim to 'tradition'. Perhaps because there was a limited availability of ingredients available to cooks in Italy when these traditional recipes were evolving, so many repeat themselves over and over, which contributed to our perception of overall dullness in the book. Tomatoes, potatoes, onions, celery, carrots, porcini mushrooms, meat broth, and parmasean cheese seemed to be required in so many recipes.

We all felt weighed down by cooking this way consistently for 3 months (our standard testing period for each book we review). This cookbook is a treatise on classic Italian cooking. With that in mind, it should be viewed as a bit of history lesson, a trip to the museum. It's not an everyday cookbook!

After cooking out of this book for a while, I have come to believe that it is the only Italian cookbook I really need. The pasta sauces in particular are all excellent and not difficult to execute. The vegetable sides and salad recipes are also classic and scrumptious. I use this book both for everyday cooking and special meals, and it hasn't let me down yet.

If you have to have only one Italian cookbook, this would be it. It's not a fancy book with lots of glossy photos, but it is full of good, solid recipes. I've been using it for years and am now using it even more recently since I joined the Cooking Italy group at Spinach Tiger where Angela is leading us in cooking with this book. A few recipes have had problems, but these have been 1) sweets (so not so interesting to me) and 2) easily recognized so you can correct the problem. Hazan does seem to have problems with the portions, so you should use you common sense and experience when looking at the recipes.

This is my only Italian cookbook. I don't need another one.

Reading and cooking from this book constitutes an almost first-class education in Italian food. A first class education would be a year in an Italian kitchen. But this is close both in terms of the range of recipes provided and the information included in each recipe's introduction.