The Il Fornaio Baking Book: Sweet and Savory Recipes from the Italian Kitchen Review

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The Il Fornaio Baking Book: Sweet and Savory Recipes from the Italian Kitchen ReviewI have long felt that Il Fornaio's restaurants are the closest thing to eating in Italy in this country (USA). In my many trips to the San Francisco Bay area, I have always made it standard procedure to go to Il Fornaio for at least an evening, and usually breakfast as well, to be reminded of my all-too-short time in Italy. I have never been disappointed. Quite the contrary, I'm frequently stunned and delighted at the quality of food and service they provide. Naturally, when I ran across this book, I was so excited, I could hardly wait to get home and begin baking some of the wondrous items they so capably turn out every day.
I would add to the previous review that Italian cooking in general (and particularly recipes from the Emilia-Romagna region a la The Splendid Table) is at once sublimely simple and intimidatingly complex, requiring many subtle layers of preparation and execution. For all the spectacular effort some of these recipes require in all but the best-stocked of kitchens, however, the results will astound you with their beauty, their unfailing goodness, and the pure spirit of the Italians' passion for life, family, and truly great food.
This is not to say beginners should avoid this book. Rather, beginners should seek out this book to learn that with which Franco Galli has successfully imbued this gorgeous (and extremely tactile) book... the tried and true methods of Old World baking. It is filled to the brim with useful information on ingredients, techniques, stories, history, and peppered with the occasional bit of good humor that makes me long for a childhood spent in Italy, learning traditions passed on through untold generations.
My hat is off to Franco Galli in grateful acknowledgement for his tremendous restaurants, this excellent book (thank you thank you thank you), and the chance to live a tiny piece of Italy through his life experience as a baker. As a footnote, I have so far not experienced any of the measurement inaccuracies mentioned in the previous review.The Il Fornaio Baking Book: Sweet and Savory Recipes from the Italian Kitchen Overview

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Food Wine The Italian Riviera & Genoa (The Terroir Guides) Review

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Food Wine The Italian Riviera & Genoa (The Terroir Guides) ReviewDavid Downie has written a Bible for authentic Ligurian food, worth the modest investment for both gastronomes and brief-stay tourists -- anybody eager to get the most value for their euros on the Italian Riviera. To experience the freshness, the aliveness, the heights of Ligurian cooking, you really must go one step beyond the seaview restaurants that dish up mediocre fare to day-tripping tourists. This is the best guide.
It's a sophisticated, thorough handbook to all the very best the region produces. Not only does does David Downie have educated taste buds -- making his recommendations reliable -- he has gone to the trouble to provide detailed directions to each of the places he recommends (a must in alley-strewn Liguria) as well as all the opening hours (yet another must on the summery Riviera, which adheres to its own clock).
Unless you know a Ligurian family and can be invited to eat at their home, following in David Downie's footsteps through Liguria is the most efficient and budget-friendly method for tasting the pure delights of Liguria's Mediterranean cuisine.
I've never met David Downie but, all put together, I have spent at least five of the last ten years exploring the nooks and crannies of the Italian Riviera during repeated long stays. I've lingered in many of the places he's lingered, so I can say from first hand experience that this new guide to the food and wine of the Italian Riviera and Genoa is a fantastic achievement, absolutely essential for every visitor who wants to eat and drink memorably without spending a fortune -- that is to say, to live as the Ligurians actually do themselves.
Not only is the writing witty, economical and a pleasure to read on its own, this book includes page after page of truly touching, evocative color photos of small-town Liguria, photographed by Alison Harris. These are not the usual guidebook Riviera pictures of sky, sea and flouncy flowers. These are intimate pictures of the people, the places and the traditions that sustain the Ligurian soul -- the open-air markets, the cooks, the bakers, the fisherman, the olive cultivation, the historic caffes, the atmospheric piazzas and winding walkways beloved by locals. It's great documentary material -- and great to look it.
This guidebook goes beyond the tourist menus touted by lazier generalized guide books to help visitors to discover the town-by-town specialties of Liguria, a region still so dependent on handed-down family recipes, century-old bake shops, special cooking pans, once-a-year treats. It champions Liguria's still secret "entroterra" -- the dramatic, atmospheric hilltowns, sometimes only a half-hour's bus ride from the jam-packed beaches -- where the food is sublime, the silence is mystical, the landscape unspoiled, and the fascinating traditions date back, unchanged, forever.
This past weekend I took a friend -- who has lived in Genoa for more than 20 years -- to one of this book's recommended restaurants. He was immensely impressed with the book's section on Genoa, citing places only known to the most savvy locals. Similarly, I recently followed this book's advice and entered an almost ridiculously tiny bake shop in a wayside village -- and it was a revelation to eat the pine-nut cookies recommended by the book. Only in this tiny corner of Liguria could I taste these light, crunchy, aromatic cookies, packed with the flavor of the pine trees all around me -- and I would never have found them without Downie's help.
This thorough guide book is a wonderful investment, unlikely to be surpassed, and bravo to the author and photographer, and the publisher! It supersedes Fred Plotkin's books on Liguria, which are now -- alas -- dated. This is a fresh as Liguria's cooking itself.
I cannot imagine anyone being disappointed if they purchase it.Food Wine The Italian Riviera & Genoa (The Terroir Guides) Overview

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The Italian Baker Review

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The Italian Baker ReviewWhen I was hired to be the bread baker at an Italian restaurant in Carrboro, NC, I had no experience baking. The chef told me the restaurant wanted to start baking its own bread instead of buying it from a local bakery. She handed me this book, and I took it home to read and to pick out some recipes to try out.
I found the book quite readable, and I agree with the reviewer below who praises the book's "detailed, insatiable descriptions of the regions, and history of the recipe at hand." Also worthy of praise are the sections on the fundmentals of baking, which were particularly helpful to me when I was learning to bake. By covering the fundamentals and the various techniques used in different regions of Italy, the book gave me a good idea of what aspects I could experiment with comfortably, and which steps were more or less prescribed.
Our baking program turned out to be a success. Diners were especially fond of the scroll-shaped loaves that we learned to make from "The Italian Baker." Later we started making sourdough bread at the restaurant, based on techniques learned from this book. One night after we had been at it for a few weeks, one of our waiters came back into the kitchen to pass on compliments from a diner from San Francisco who said that our sourdough bread was as good as any she had had at home in SF. We were ecstatic. Only a few months before my cooking expertise had been more or less limited to heating up canned soup!
So I give this book a very enthusiastic recommendation for anyone wanting to bake Italian bread and then possibly go on to improvise their own loaves. In addition to being well-written, it is also a very handsome volume.The Italian Baker Overview

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