Here is an inspiring, wide-ranging A-Z guide to one of the world's best-loved cuisines. Designed for cooks and consumers alike, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food covers all aspects of the history and culture of Italian gastronomy, from dishes, ingredients, and delicacies to cooking methods and implements, regional specialties, the universal appeal of Italian cuisine, influences from outside Italy, and much more. Following in the footsteps of princes and popes, vagabond artists and cunning peasants, austere scholars and generations of unknown, unremembered women who shaped pasta, moulded cheeses and lovingly tended their cooking pots, Gillian Riley celebrates a heritage of amazing richness and delight. She brings equal measures of enthusiasm and expertise to her writing, and her entries read like mini-essays, laced with wit and gastronomical erudition, marked throughout by descriptive brilliance, and entirely free of the pompous tone that afflicts so much writing about food. The Companion is attentive to both tradition and innovation in Italian cooking, and covers an extraordinary range of information, from Anonimo Toscano, a medieval cookbook, to Bartolomeo Bimbi, a Florentine painter commissioned by Cosimo de Medici to paint portraits of vegetables, to Paglierina di Rifreddo, a young cheese made of unskimmed cows' milk, to zuppa inglese, a dessert invented by 19th century Neapolitan pastry chefs. Major topics receive extended treatment. The entry for Parmesan, for example, runs to more than 2,000 words and includes information on its remarkable nutritional value, the region where it is produced, the breed of cow used to produce it (the razza reggiana, or vacche rosse), the role of the cheese maker, the origin of its name, Molière's deathbed demand for it, its frequent and lustrous depiction in 16th and 17th century paintings, and the proper method of serving, where Riley admonishes: "One disdains the phallic peppermill, but must always appreciate the attentive grating, at the table, of parmesan over pasta or soup, as magical in its way as shavings of truffles." Such is the scope and flavor of The Oxford Companion to Italian Food. For anyone with a hunger to learn more about the history, culture and variety of Italian cuisine, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food offers endless satisfactions.
He also started an educational wine program for staff and created the restaurant's first wine pairing menus. www.theinnatlittlewashington.com Kathy Casey is the chef-owner of Kathy Casey Food Studios in Seattle.
GIBSON. EVOE. A perfectionist conquers the seasons with a grill pan and a make-do playbook. Imagine you've wandered into a cooking show, but the audience is just you. Standing in what looks like a dorm room decorated by Sur La Table, ...
Gibson. Martini. Martinis are not only excellent, but also sophisticated. Ingredients: 6 parts gin or vodka 1 part dry vermouth 3 cocktail onions Directions: 1. Shake or stir gin (or vodka) and vermouth with ice. 2.
... 153; in calas, 175 Roanoke Island, N.C., 74 Roux, 12, 13, 16, 17, 84, 85 S St. Cecilia Punch, 189 St. Charles Hotel, 183 Salad: wilted, 133; composed, 135; potato, 135; tomato aspic, 140; cucumbers and onions, 141 Salisbury, ...
Food preservation teacher and cook Karen Solomon teaches you how to smoke, pickle, salt-cure, oil-cure, and dehydrate a variety of meats, dairy, fish, eggs, and other proteins economically and at home.
A lot of it was food that would ordinarily be a hard - sell on an à la carte menu . It was sort of funky food that people practically fell over — they were so impressed with it . But if we had put some of these dishes on our menu — like ...
Wineries of all types , sizes , and levels of quality buy and sell wines in bulk . Some sell all of their production that way . Most large producers buy significant amounts of bulk wines from other wineries and then BLEND , bottle , and ...
A comprehensive guide to whole-animal butchery, covering the rudiments of butchery; how meat animals are raised, slaughtered, and marketed; and the complexities of meat grading, carcass yield, marbling scores, and issues with inspection.
Two hip event planners team up to present a guide to throwing a fabulous party, offering insider tricks, fashionable tips, and clever strategies on choosing a creative theme, finding the perfect location, designing memorable invitations and ...
There's a complete resource guide in the back, not to mention savvy tips from Puff Daddy, Russell Simmons, Lara Flynn Boyle, David Copperfield, Hugh Jackman, and Donald Trump.