Di Palo's Guide to the Essential Foods of Italy

Di Palo's Guide to the Essential Foods of Italy

Author: Lou Di Palo

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2014-09-09

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0345545818

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The ultimate guide to the finest foods of Italy from the oldest, most celebrated Italian market in New York City In the heart of New York City’s Little Italy sits Di Palo’s, a family-owned food shop that has been the treasure of the neighborhood for more than a century. The four generations of Di Palos who have run this Italian specialty market have made it their mission to bring customers the finest old-world selections from Italy—handcrafted mozzarella, buttery prosciutto, estate olive oils, traditional artisanal pastas from throughout the country. Now, in one colorful volume, Lou Di Palo, great-grandson of the founder and steward of the family legacy, shares the vibrant history of this storied establishment and a lifetime of wisdom about the cuisine beloved around the world. Di Palo’s Guide to the Essential Foods of Italy takes you on a gourmet excursion through Italy’s twenty distinct regions, from Sicily to Umbria to Alto Adige. Each chapter highlights a specific food and its rich history, along with practical tips for selecting, storing, and serving it at home. Many include signature family recipes that have been handed down through the generations, including Grandma Mary’s Sicilian Caponata and Concetta Di Palo’s Meatballs, or recipes gathered from trips to Italy over the years, such as Trapani-Style Salted Sea Bass and Polenta con Formaggio Crucolo Fuso. Readers will discover, among many other things, the secret to a balsamic vinegar worthy of sharing only with one’s closest friends, the proper way to prepare the perfect espresso, and the importance of looking for the Denominazione d’Origine Protetta—or the Protected Designation of Origin seal—which certifies that your food is a traditional, regional product. Complete with dozens of mouthwatering photographs, engaging anecdotes, and candid stories, and featuring a foreword by Academy Award–winning director Martin Scorsese, this immersive volume is part family narrative, part culinary odyssey, and part cookbook. Di Palo’s Guide to the Essential Foods of Italy is your ticket to the best Italian foods—without having to wait in line! Praise for Di Palo’s Guide to the Essential Foods of Italy “Of all the stores in all the world, Di Palo’s is probably my favorite.”—Ruth Reichl “Lou Di Palo is single-handedly preserving the history of Little Italy in New York City. Shopping at Di Palo’s is an authentic, personal experience. When you walk into the shop, you feel like you’re in the center of the universe. I’ve been waiting for Lou to write this book for years. He’s a good friend and an American treasure.”—Tyler Florence “Di Palo’s has been one of the Seven Wonders of New York since 1925. This book is a beautiful story of their commitment to keeping Italian traditions, and shows the passion they’ve had for the artisanal best for almost one hundred years.”—Chef Daniel Boulud “Lou Di Palo’s depth and breadth of knowledge of Italian foods extends from the Alpine hills to the Sicilian coastline and he manages to bring it all home to us in this wonderful book.”—Chef Michael Lomonaco “I love this book because it explains to an American how to elevate and enjoy great Italian ingredients. The pride that comes from Lou and his family translates to the store and, now, to the pages of this book. I found myself hungry after reading it. You will too.”—Chef Alex Guarnaschelli


Al Dente

Al Dente

Author: Fabio Parasecoli

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2014-04-15

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1780232969

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Spaghetti with meatballs, fettuccine alfredo, margherita pizzas, ricotta and parmesan cheeses—we have Italy to thank for some of our favorite comfort foods. Home to a dazzling array of wines, cheese, breads, vegetables, and salamis, Italy has become a mecca for foodies who flock to its pizzerias, gelateries, and family-style and Michelin-starred restaurants. Taking readers across the country’s regions and beyond in the first book in Reaktion’s new Foods and Nations series, Al Dente explores our obsession with Italian food and how the country’s cuisine became what it is today. Fabio Parasecoli discovers that for centuries, southern Mediterranean countries such as Italy fought against food scarcity, wars, invasions, and an unfavorable agricultural environment. Lacking in meat and dairy, Italy developed foodways that depended on grains, legumes, and vegetables until a stronger economy in the late 1950s allowed the majority of Italians to afford a more diverse diet. Parasecoli elucidates how the last half century has seen new packaging, conservation techniques, industrial mass production, and more sophisticated systems of transportation and distribution, bringing about profound changes in how the country’s population thought about food. He also reveals that much of Italy’s culinary reputation hinged on the world’s discovery of it as a healthy eating model, which has led to the prevalence of high-end Italian restaurants in major cities around the globe. Including historical recipes for delicious Italian dishes to enjoy alongside a glass of crisp Chianti, Al Dente is a fascinating survey of this country’s cuisine that sheds new light on why we should always leave the gun and take the cannoli.


The Food of Italy

The Food of Italy

Author: Waverley Root

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 1992-06-02

Total Pages: 770

ISBN-13: 0679738967

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In this thoroughly comprehensive, utterly captivating culinary guidebook, acclaimed food writer Waverley Root traverses Italy from Lombardy to Sicily, and across 3,000 years of invasions. An exhaustive catalog of the country’s gastronomic legacy, The Food of Italy explains the regional delicacies, the traditions, and the history that define the way Italians eat. From the legally enforced frugality of the Renaissance table to the enduring Saracen luxury of Sicilian desserts, from the lasagna of Bologna to the saltimbocca of Rome, Root explores the secrets and customs of a cuisine so nuanced that even the basic ragu Bolognese has some two hundred variations. A culinary adventurer who made his mark decades before Anthony Bourdain appeared on the scene, Root shares the stories of an elephant forced to spend the winter of 1551 in the South Tyrol and the dishes named after him, the proper way to bottle Chianti, and the mysteries surrounding the origin of tortellini. Essential reading for travelers—of the armchair and ticketed variety, alike—The Food of Italy, which features decorative maps (that may not be legible for all readers) and illustrations, brings the subtleties of the Italian palate into any home.


Regional Foods of Northern Italy

Regional Foods of Northern Italy

Author: Marlena De Blasi

Publisher: Three Rivers Press

Published: 2003-06-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780761512318

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This is a cookbook like no other. It evokes the essence of Northern Italy's traditional foods in a beautifully wrought amalgam of recipe and narrative. It beckons you across the wet stone of Venice's Rialto bridge into a candlelit fifteenth-century cantina. It invites you down a forest road in Umbria, where grappa-fortified fishermen toss trout onto a wood fire and stage a sunset feast. It proffers nearly two hundred recipes from the heart and soul of Italy's North, including: - Risotto allo Zafferano Milanese - Arista! Arista! - - Pasta delle Sfogliatrici - Pesce in Saor - - La Salsiccia alla Moda di Lucrezia Borgia - Fegato alla Veneziana - - Carbonada d'Enfer Arvier - Pesto di Mandorle e Noci Ferraresi - - Pollo alla Marengo - Cialzons della Famiglia de Galateo - - Pagnotta di Patate - Pasta e Fagioli - - Sogliole in Gratella - Caffe alla Valdostana - Tiramisu - This remarkable world within a book reflects the honest, authentic tastes of a people for whom food is a cardinal passion. With it in hand, you will perfume your home with the ancient and divine scents of glorious food, calling forth the ineffable essence of this land and its bounty. Let the adventure begin. About the Author Marlena de Blasi is an American living in Venice with her husband, Fernando. She has traveled extensively in her adopted country, stopping to savor each region's abundance. A food and wine journalist and culinary historian, her articles on food and travel have appeared in "The International Herald Tribune, The St. Louis Riverfront Times, and "Sacramento magazine. She is presently writing this volume's sequel, "Regional Foods of Southern Italy. "From the Hardcoveredition.


Food of the Italian South

Food of the Italian South

Author: Katie Parla

Publisher: Clarkson Potter

Published: 2019-03-12

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1524760463

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85 authentic recipes and 100 stunning photographs that capture the cultural and cooking traditions of the Italian South, from the mountains to the coast. In most cultures, exploring food means exploring history—and the Italian south has plenty of both to offer. The pasta-heavy, tomato-forward “Italian food” the world knows and loves does not actually represent the entire country; rather, these beloved and widespread culinary traditions hail from the regional cuisines of the south. Acclaimed author and food journalist Katie Parla takes you on a tour through these vibrant destinations so you can sink your teeth into the secrets of their rustic, romantic dishes. Parla shares rich recipes, both original and reimagined, along with historical and cultural insights that encapsulate the miles of rugged beaches, sheep-dotted mountains, meditatively quiet towns, and, most important, culinary traditions unique to this precious piece of Italy. With just a bite of the Involtini alla Piazzetta from farm-rich Campania, a taste of Giurgiulena from the sugar-happy kitchens of Calabria, a forkful of ’U Pan’ Cuott’ from mountainous Basilicata, a morsel of Focaccia from coastal Puglia, or a mouthful of Pizz e Foje from quaint Molise, you’ll discover what makes the food of the Italian south unique. Praise for Food of the Italian South “Parla clearly crafted every recipe with reverence and restraint, balancing authenticity with accessibility for the modern home cook.”—Fine Cooking “Parla’s knowledge and voice shine in this outstanding meditation on the food of South Italy from the Molise, Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, and Calabria regions. . . . This excellent volume proves that no matter how well-trodden the Italian cookbook path is, an expert with genuine curiosity and a well-developed voice can still find new material.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “There's There’s Italian food, and then there's there’s Italian food. Not just pizza, pasta, and prosciutto, but obscure recipes that have been passed down through generations and are only found in Italy… . . . and in this book.”—Woman’s Day (Best Cookbooks Coming Out in 2019) “[With] Food of the Italian South, Parla wanted to branch out from Rome and celebrate the lower half of the country.”—Punch “Acclaimed culinary journalist Katie Parla takes cookbook readers and home cooks on a culinary journey.”—The Parkersburg News and Sentinel


Why Italians Love to Talk About Food

Why Italians Love to Talk About Food

Author: Elena Kostioukovitch

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2009-10-13

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 1429935596

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Italians love to talk about food. The aroma of a simmering ragú, the bouquet of a local wine, the remembrance of a past meal: Italians discuss these details as naturally as we talk about politics or sports, and often with the same flared tempers. In Why Italians Love to Talk About Food, Elena Kostioukovitch explores the phenomenon that first struck her as a newcomer to Italy: the Italian "culinary code," or way of talking about food. Along the way, she captures the fierce local pride that gives Italian cuisine its remarkable diversity. To come to know Italian food is to discover the differences of taste, language, and attitude that separate a Sicilian from a Piedmontese or a Venetian from a Sardinian. Try tasting Piedmontese bagna cauda, then a Lombard cassoela, then lamb ala Romana: each is part of a unique culinary tradition. In this learned, charming, and entertaining narrative, Kostioukovitch takes us on a journey through one of the world's richest and most adored food cultures. Organized according to region and colorfully designed with illustrations, maps, menus, and glossaries, Why Italians Love to Talk About Food will allow any reader to become as versed in the ways of Italian cooking as the most seasoned of chefs. Food lovers, history buffs, and gourmands alike will savor this exceptional celebration of Italy's culinary gifts.


Italian Cuisine

Italian Cuisine

Author: Alberto Capatti

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2003-09-17

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0231509049

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Italy, the country with a hundred cities and a thousand bell towers, is also the country with a hundred cuisines and a thousand recipes. Its great variety of culinary practices reflects a history long dominated by regionalism and political division, and has led to the common conception of Italian food as a mosaic of regional customs rather than a single tradition. Nonetheless, this magnificent new book demonstrates the development of a distinctive, unified culinary tradition throughout the Italian peninsula. Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari uncover a network of culinary customs, food lore, and cooking practices, dating back as far as the Middle Ages, that are identifiably Italian: o Italians used forks 300 years before other Europeans, possibly because they were needed to handle pasta, which is slippery and dangerously hot. o Italians invented the practice of chilling drinks and may have invented ice cream. o Italian culinary practice influenced the rest of Europe to place more emphasis on vegetables and less on meat. o Salad was a distinctive aspect of the Italian meal as early as the sixteenth century. The authors focus on culinary developments in the late medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras, aided by a wealth of cookbooks produced throughout the early modern period. They show how Italy's culinary identities emerged over the course of the centuries through an exchange of information and techniques among geographical regions and social classes. Though temporally, spatially, and socially diverse, these cuisines refer to a common experience that can be described as Italian. Thematically organized around key issues in culinary history and beautifully illustrated, Italian Cuisine is a rich history of the ingredients, dishes, techniques, and social customs behind the Italian food we know and love today.


Made in Italy

Made in Italy

Author: Giorgio Locatelli

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2011-03-22

Total Pages: 610

ISBN-13: 0062047272

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Giorgio Locatelli started helping out in the family restaurant at age five. He was raised in Corgeno in northern Italy, close to the Swiss border and Milan. Almost everything his family ate and drank was produced locally. He was told by the head chef at his first real Italian restaurant job that he would never make it as a chef. His grandmother, who shared her great love of food with him, said Giorgio would have to go back and show him. And so he did. After getting suspended from cooking school because of kissing a girl on the school's steps, he went on to become a greatly admired chef. Made in Italy is a 624-page, vibrantly illustrated book full of Locatelli's recipes, insight and historical detail about Italian food. He combines food narrative with hands-on expertise of a top chef. He peppers the book with evocative stories and funny and often outspoken observations on the state of food today. This is the contemporary Italian food bible, from the acknowledged master of modern Italian cooking.