Learn to COOK - Sicilian Home Cooking: Family Recipes from Gangivecchio
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List Price: $30.00
Our Price: $21.90
Your Save: $ 8.10 ( 27% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Knopf
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.59458
EAN: 9780375403996
ISBN: 037540399X
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2001-04
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: 2001-04-24
Studio: Knopf
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Editorial Reviews:
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“To know and be close to your family, nothing is more important than dining together at home, as often as possible, on delicious home cooking. Salute!”
Four years after winning the 1997 James Beard Award for Best Italian Cookbook, Wanda Tornabene and her daughter, Giovanna, return with a glorious second helping of homestyle recipes. Sicilian Home Cooking offers more charming stories and rustic, delicious dishes from the kitchen of Gangivecchio, the Tornabenes’ magnificent thirteenth-century abbey in Sicily’s Madonie Mountains.
As in the award-winning La Cucina Siciliana di Gangivecchio, here you’ll find a wonderful array of simple, mouthwatering recipes for antipasti, soups, pasta, rice, meat, fish, vegetables, salads, and desserts—including easy and delicious variations on bruschetta, the hearty Fagioli e Festoncini di Nonna Elena (Granny Elena’s Bean and Pasta Soup), enticing entrees like Cotolette di Vitello di Wanda (Wanda’s Veal Cutlets) and Gamberi in Crosta alla Gangivecchio (Gangivecchio’s Shrimp en Croute), and sublime desserts like Cartocci (Fried Pastry Coils with Ricotta Cream) and Gelo di Caffè (Coffee Gelatine). Sicilian Home Cooking also offers some tempting new sections. “Egg Dishes” showcases this essential ingredient in beautiful frittatas. “Pizza and Focaccia” is a salute to these most Italian of breads, adorned with fresh toppings. The section on couscous teaches the traditional method for this Arab speciality, which Sicilians have adopted as their own. “Wines and Liqueurs” gives recipes for homemade, refreshing libations, including the Italian favorite, Limoncello.
The homestyle recipes are nothing short of fantastic—but what makes this book even more special is that Wanda and Giovanna welcome you not only into their kitchen but also into their lives at Gangivecchio. In stories rich with the fragrant atmosphere of the gorgeous Sicilian countryside, they share memories of the annual grape harvest, a special Christmas snowstorm, and an illicit childhood trip on a commerical fishing boat. They describe favorite local restaurants and dishes from the past and the present. And they tell funny and touching stories of relatives, friends, and pets—both old and new.
Sicilian Home Cooking is a cookbook and much more—a true slice of Sicilian life.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Lots of nice, useful and easy to prepare recipes.
Comment: There are great vegetable "recipes" (really no more than a few lines)using mint, anchovy, etc. that will give you a flair for Sicilian cooking: asparagus, potato and mushroom cake, cauliflower pizza, fennel and artichoke salad, cucumber and caper salad, white bean salad. The pasta recipes are also nice, slightly different takes on what most people have already had: fettucine carbonara with vegetables, lemon spaghtetti, ruote with radicchio and gorgonzola, fettucine with yellow peppers, and about a dozen more. I think the appetizers are the best part: sicilian sweet and sour meatballs(don't think pink), bruschetta with swordfish and mint, caponata, artichoke tart with sardines and ricotta (I think its similar to the american artichoke and mayonaisse recipe going around), olive marinades, gorgonzola and pear tart. Good book, but yes, you need to have some experience in the kitchen to know when they've left some steps out. For instance the preparation of artichokes requires baby artichokes. Some dishes are very heavy, like baked eggs with bechamel sauce. You have to know what will be appropriate to serve as an appetizer, etc. Chicken's probably easiest prepared by using bone-in, skin-on pieces rather than cutting up a whole chicken. But there's a lot of inspiration and a lot to learn from these women. I definitely think it's worth buying if you know your way around a kitchen, regardless of what cuisine you're most familiar with.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Easy-to-use, entertaining cookbook with yummy recipes
Comment: The authors, Wanda Tornabene and her daughter, Giovanna Tornabene, are co-owners of Gangivecchio, a restaurant housed in a thirteenth-century abbey in Sicily's Madonie Mountains. In addition to providing scrumptious, authentic Sicilian recipes, this cookbook is great fun to read, because these two world-class chefs also offer many funny stories of their colorful relatives, friends and pets.Their detailed table of contents, thorough index, and menu plans guide you easily through the book, and the recipes are divided into these convenient sections: appetizers, soups, egg dishes, pizza and focaccia, pasta, couscous, rice, meat main-course dishes, fish and seafood main-course dishes, vegetables, salads, desserts, wines and liqueurs. I, personally, am on a high-protein diet, and one might wonder what someone like me could possibly get from a cookbook whose recipes all hail from the land of pasta. Actually, quite a lot. The vegetable, meat and seafood dishes are delicious, low-carb, and not horribly time consuming to make. And it is crucial on a special diet to, as much as possible, find things that taste good to eat our you won't stay on it. All of these recipes are packed with flavor. Here are some examples of my personal favorites from the vegetable-dishes section: Syracuse-Style Peppers (olive oil, salt, mint leaves, garlic, and vinegar for seasoning), Country-Style Eggplant (olive oil, vinegar, oregano, mint, and hot pepper flakes for seasoning), Gangi-Style Artichokes (onions, green olives, capers, celery hearts, vinegar, and pepper for seasoning). In addition, even those of us on a high-protein diet can occasionally have bread. And, as for me, if I am going to indulge, I much prefer to eat really great bread, such as the terrific focaccia in this cookbook. The authors furnish a basic focaccia dough recipe from which you can spring off into many variations such as broccoli focaccia, focaccia with onions and tomatoes, spinach focaccia, and focaccia stuffed with arugula, sun-dried tomatoes and/or cheese. I highly recommend this cookbook for inexperienced as well as seasoned cooks, whether cooking for themselves alone, or for their families and friends. If you love Italian cooking, you'll adore these Sicilian recipes!
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