This is a beautifully photographed book with some amazing recipes and history. However, I'm extremely disappointed in the print of the book. The titles on all recipes are compromised because the ink is faded and didn't print effectively. For a book as lovely as this and expensive as well, I expected better from Christopher Kimball. I will keep it, but again, disappointed in the print. (Update) I contacted Milk Street and they responded with the explanation that the print is not "faded", but rather the font they chose because it's "rustic". I'm still disappointed and I think they should have disclosed that information. I'm still keeping the book.
Well, I’m very happy that I received this brand new cookbook. Frankly, it looks fabulous. My only concern is the quality of the printing. Almost every page has a poorly printed title and just is not up to the quality that I would expect from Milk Street.
Simple, delicious Italian old country recipes. And so healthy! My wife has made a dozen so far, and each has been delicious!
Amazing cookbook. Each section is like a trip to Italy
Great book. Lots of easy to follow recipes with a ton of pictures!Great value.
The explanations in the first paragraph are interesting and informative. I get a fundamental idea of the what the dish is in Italy translated to using ingredients available outside of Italy. It gives clear instructions and available ingredients, or workable substitutes and the results of using them. I personally like the opening story for each dish, and how I can make it. It's organized into types of dishes, even pizza. This is a fun read, and I look through it often.
Excellent, Christopher Kimball and his Company, Milk Street, got their act together, fun recipes, great concept. Photography can't be beat. For you, foodies, must book and read.
We are cooking our way through this book and have had excellent results every time. The directions are clear and easy to follow.
Love this book! Love the stories, love the photos & especially love the recipes! I highly recommend it!
This is one of the best cookbooks ever. It presents the cuisine of Italy the way a real Italian would. Simply, honestly and joyfully. I want to try every recipe.
great book up to Milk Street high standards.What I liked is the " equal-time" for salads and sides. I love salads but how to get beyond the green salad boredom?Read this book!
This is a great collection of authentic regional recipes. When we lived in Tuscany and traveled through Italy, we actually enjoyed many of the dishes, though we had no clue as to how to accurately prepare. I’ve been a serious hobby cook for some 50+ years, and now I have a great resource to prepare some of the dishes we enjoyed in Italy
Stunning… the quality of this book is amazing… the recipes look wonderful ( made 1 so far) didn’t disappoint.. it reads like a book… not just a stack of recipes.. can spend hours looking thru.. enjoy.
Great recipes. Easy to make and understand and they are yummy. Working my way through them.
What a beautiful cookbook, it's a lot larger (and heavy) than I thought it would be. Every recipe has a picture and love the step by step directions. Covers all areas of Italian cooking including desserts.
This is a beautifully produced cookbook/picture book/ storybook. As only Milk Street can do, this book guides you through each recipe to perfection. A little of this, but not too much or the dish isn’t as tasty. That’s why I love Milk Street cookbooks and recipes, you are being taught how to make it perfectly.On the other hand, if you are a seasoned cook who cooks your way and no other, this book might not be your cup of tea (unless the stories of the origins of Italian cooking and the wonderful photography are enough). I love experimenting and often a dish isn’t the same twice, so their detailed instructions intrigue me.This book would make a wonderful gift for that friend who loves to cook and especially loves Italy, its people and “la dolce vita”.
I pre-ordered and was not disappointed. Worth the wait. One of the best cookbooks in my collection. Great recipes. Easy to make, nothing too difficult and adapted to the American pantry with a few new ingredients to discover. I especially enjoyed the stories that accompany the recipes and learning about the dishes (many of them new to me), the regions they come from, and the cooks who inspired the recipes. Am happily cooking my way through the book. Well done!
i own over 100 italian cookbooks. it’s an obsession. this one is good and it is great if you want to cook pasta. the problem i have with it is the repetitive recipes: there are three different variants of broccoli rabe and sausage. there are also four different meatball recipes. ln the seafood section, 6 of the 9 recipes include some form of pasta. in the carne section, 5 of the 9 recipes are also some form of pasta recipe. while that’s fine, italian cuisine goes so much further than pasta, this is just way too unbalanced. Last, and this is something I truly hate, milk street insists on telling people to drain their pasta. never, never never drain your pasta. cook your condiment or sauce in a separate pan and use tongs or a strainer to remove the pasta from its water and put it into the sauce pan. take it out several minutes before it’s supposed to be done and finish cooking it in the sauce pan. using a spoon or ladle, take the pasta water and use it in the sauce. the starch and salt in the water creates an incredibly creamy sauce (with no cream used). There’s an italian process called "la mantecatura," the critical finishing step in which a pasta, its sauce, and some of the starchy pasta water are mounted with fat in the form of butter, oil, and/or cheese and emulsified to form a silky, glossy glaze. (I copied that from daniel gritzer serious eats). you can’t do this if you drain your pasta. while milk street has some good ideas and this book, notwithstanding how flimsy it is, uncovers some good, old recipes, they lose credibility entirely for their huge miss in directions for cooking pasta. shame on you, milk street, especially in a book so heavily overweighted to pasta recipes. but, don’t get me wrong, the book is worthwhile for many of the recipes, as long as you disregard their directions for cooking the pasta.
This is a hard review to write. I first bought the Kindle version and wanted to write a furious 2-3 star review because the book is almost unusable on Kindle. No contents fur recipes, not even at the chapter level. No index. The only way to make the cookbook even marginally usefully was to manually bookmark every recipe.But the contents were so good! I finally bought the hardback even though I'll have to evict one, or even two, books from our way overflowing shelves (it's as big book). And the hardback is beautiful! And it has the index they didn't bother to put in the Kindle edition (adding insult to injury).So I'm reluctantly settling on four stars.
Milk Street has outdone itself. I am Italian and have hundreds of cookbooks and a vast Italian cookbook collection. I have no coffee table book. This will be the one. I can’t wait to start cooking these recipes. (The book just arrived an hr ago, first day of publication). It is authentic. Love the pictures. Love the stories of the people, places, ingredients and foods. I see my grandmother from Bari making orichette by hand, then laying them out on a sheet on a bed to dry til dinner (the big Italian Sunday dinner that goes on for hours), and all us cousins sneaking in and eating them raw lol. She must’ve made extra because there was always plenty for everyone at the table. Thank you, Milk Street for such a wonderful book.
