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23 of 23 found the following review helpful:
Extraordinary resource! Jan 11, 2007
By IMWriter
We are passionate cooks who went to cooking school in Tuscany two years agao, and my huge cookbook collection has its share of Italian cookbooks. This one is unusual, though, in its emphasis on traditional family-style recipes with seasonal ingredients that nonetheless are outstanding meldings of flavor. The recipes are organized by season, with excellent commentary. Although the recipes are not particularly simple, they are clear and straightforward and do not depend on exotic ingredients or unusual tools.
The first three recipes we tried were all superb, and the Zuppa di Pesce is the best we've ever had, whether at home or in a restaurant! We are eagerly waiting to try some recipes until the ingredients come in season, and we're continuing to try the winter options. Delizioso!
15 of 15 found the following review helpful:
A Delicious Addition to Meal Preparation Jan 09, 2007
By A. Burling
Ms. Marchetti has written a wonderfully clear cookbook on a topic near and dear to my heart, the cooking of Italy. She has focussed this book on soups and stews but does include a few other dishes. I have prepared a number of her recipes and have found them to be easy to follow and, most important, delicious.
The book is laid out in seasons, winter, spring, summer and fall giving the reader the opportunity to select recipes based on what is fresh. It also includes an opening chapter of useful basics on how to make stocks, tomato sauces and pasta dough.
Unlike many cookbooks, this book contains a number of recipes that I would like to use and add to my repetoire. The mushroom soup, the sausage with lentils and the Christmas calimari are among my favorites.
I have given this book along with a ladle as a wedding gift. It is accessible for the amateur cook and to the more seasoned chef as well.
The lovely photography by William Meppem really bring the food to life.
14 of 15 found the following review helpful:
A Charmingly Written Cookbook Jan 11, 2007
By David E. Trend
"The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy" is a beautifully written and produced cookbook that goes beyond mere recipes. Ms. Marchetti includes numerous anecdotes that make it a pleasure to read, and Mr. Meppem's excellent photographs make one's mouth water. The recipes are written clearly and in detail. Those we have tried so far have been very good indeed. Clearly the author has an extensive background in Italian cuisine.
Highly recommended.
22 of 29 found the following review helpful:
Four and a half, really. Very good if you are a big soup fan. Aug 19, 2006
By B. Marold
"Bruce W. Marold"
`The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy' is the first cookbook by culinary journalist, Domenica Marchetti, published by Chronicle Books, the old San Francisco war-horse publisher of trade paperback cookbooks. The biggest problem this book faces is the fact that there are already numerous fine books, including some outstanding titles dedicated to soups. Leading the pack among recent titles is Deborah Madison's `Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen' and Anne Sheasby's `The Soup Cookbook'. Even more challenging is the glut of great Italian cookbooks.
Before comparing Ms. Marchetti's effort with other books, it is important to point out her strongest feature, which is the fact that her soup recipes are divided into the four seasons, with fifteen recipes per season. Less impressive is the fact that among her 60 featured recipes, only a minority (28) are for soups. The remaining 32 recipes are nominally stews; however, many such as the Stuffed Beef Roll in Tomato Sauce and the Oven Braised Endive look a lot more like casseroles, braises, roasts with sauces, or even frittatas than they do stews.
In comparison to Ms. Marchetti's Italian 28 soup recipes, Michele Scicolone's encyclopedic `1000 Italian Recipes' has 41 soup recipes, all of which are quite certainly soups. Also, the authoritative `Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking' by Marcella Hazan has 35 soup recipes. So, you are not really getting more soup for your dollar in this book if you already own one of these other large Italian recipe cookbooks. Another caveat I have is that while Ms. Marchetti indeed covers virtually all the different varieties of Italian soups, her recipes tend toward her interpretations or variations on classic recipes, rather than the original classics themselves.
I must be clear on the fact that the book contains more than 60 recipes, in that it includes an introductory chapter with seven (7) recipes for broths, sauces, and egg pasta. It also has a chapter of accompaniments with 11 recipes for crostinis, croutons, risotto, polenta, and tarts. So we get 78 recipes with 28 soup recipes for about $20 or $0.25 per recipe. This is getting close to being pricy, so the value of the book depends a lot on how much you like soup, and how big your collection of Italian cookbooks is already.
For this price, the author also gives us 25 pages of instruction on basic kitchen skills that the average experienced home cook can easily skip over with no danger of missing anything important. On the other hand, a novice who reads this may be struck by the irony in Ms. Marchetti's statement that you don't really need many pieces of equipment, after which she reels off 26 classes of equipment needed to make soup, including a few obvious redundancies such as a potato masher and food mill, and a few unnecessary items, such as a garlic press. Her glossary of ingredients is much better, but no better than you can get from a standard text such as Senora Hazan.
All this carping should not take away from the fact that the recipes are all very well done. My principle arguments with them are with the brodo recipes, which add the vegetables in too soon, and the egg pasta recipe that does with a food processor what a good Italian Nonna would do with the classic well method. With these good recipes, organized by season, there is also an organization within season by thinner to thicker soup, which Ms. Marchetti describes in the introduction. My problem with this is that cookbook readers don't read introductions (generally), so it would have been nice to categorize each soup plainly in a header, or in a cross table of contents of soups by type.
This is a decent, respectable book. It's main problem is that it has taken on a field in which there is a lot of stiff competition, and no aspect of the book dazzled me, unlike Ms. Madison's excellent book on Vegetarian soups. If you like the concept behind this book, but your shelves are already sagging with Italian cookbooks, I suggest you try `Twelve Months of Monastery Soups' by Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette' which has over 120 soups arranged by month.
Ultimately, I think this book is great for all those who really like the seasonal cooking principle, and are always on the lookout for good books based on this idea.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Great book to browse through on cold winter day!! Jan 25, 2011
By Maria Sophia
I actually bought this AMAZON book selection for a gift and ended up wanting to keep it myself!!The recipes were easy to read and each one seemed more delicious than the last! Most of the ingredients for the soups and stews could be purchased in my rather small community which was also a plus for me and for the person receiving the book. The illustrations were well done. This is a great recipe book to have on your shelf!!
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