Rustico: Regional Italian Country Cooking at Chef2Chef

The rustic dishes range from antipasti to dolce, and include more familiar "specialties" such as Tuscany's Summer Bread and Tomato Salad and Milan's Saffron Risotto, and the excitingly unexplored, such as Molise's Hand-Cut Pasta Squares in Asparagus Cream and Apulia's Orecchiette with Wilted Arugula and Tomatoes. Baked goods are particularly irresistible and include Basilicata's Smoked Bread with Sweet Onion, Tomato and Basil, and herb-showered Griddle Bread from Romagna. Sweet lovers will delight in the likes of Calabria's Chocolate Covered Roasted Figs and Mint-and-Lemon-Laced Cheese Pillows in Warm Chestnut Honey from Sardinia, among other simple desserts. With a section of basic recipes, a fine ingredient glossary, and photos throughout, the book is a true tour de force. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
As the former editor of the Magazine of La Cucina Italiana and Italian Cooking & Living, Negrin could have churned out any number of recipes for well-known classic dishes from Italy's 20 regions and left it at that. But Negrin set herself a larger challenge and succeeded admirably. She has bypassed the more familiar regional specialties to focus on lesser-known gems and has made an effort to eschew frou-frou cooking for home-style dishes. In doing so, she points up yet again why Italian cuisine is one of the world's best it offers a seemingly unending supply of surprising, fresh and delicious traditional dishes. Take a region such as Tuscany, which has been trampled by millions of tourists and has been the subject of so many cookbooks. There, Negrin finds Deep-Fried Sage Leaves, which sandwich bits of anchovy, Chestnut Flour Polenta with Sausage and Scallions, and Braised Squid with Chili, Greens, and Tomatoes. So often in regional Italian books, less glamorous regions are paired with overpowering neighbors, so that it is rare to read about the minuscule region of Molise (about a third the size of Rhode Island), but Negrin has taken the time to tease out the differences and has discovered thrifty specialties such as Hand-Cut Pasta Squares in Asparagus Cream with homemade pasta that finishes cooking in an asparagus puree. Negrin has also avoided the trap of focusing too much on Italy's deservedly famous first courses and offers in abundance antipasti (Spicy Robiola Cheese and Onion Spread from Piedmont), breads (Cheese-Stuffed Focaccia from Recco in Liguria), second courses (the Aeolian Islands' Herb-Stuffed Tuna Bundles from Sicily) and desserts (Nut-and-Fruit "Snake" of the Capuchin Nuns from Umbria). Recipes are lucid and easy to follow, and chapter introductions stylishly and accurately convey a sense of place, while sidebars offer bits of folklore. (Sept.) Forecasts: This is a truly outstanding take original enough to revive what sometimes feels like a tired subject. With this comprehensive volume her first Negrin stands poised to become an Italian expert on the level of Faith Willinger or even Marcella Hazan. Expect robust sales.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reader Reviews
`Rustico' by Italian food journalist Micol Negrin is a better than average book of regional Italian recipes in a world filled with good books on regional Italian recipes. The book's subtitle specifies that the book concentrates on `Country' cooking. And, although the book is very nicely done by region, it has no pretensions to being a scholarly work such as Waverley Root's `The Foods of Italy' or even a journalistic coverage of the subject as in Claudia Roden's very worthy `The Food of Italy'. In fact, the absence of pretension adds to the pleasant satisfaction one gets in reading the book, as it is not without merit as an introduction to the culinary world of Italy. In my mind, the book is immediately superior to Susan Herrmann Loomis' very good book `Italian Farmhouse Cookbook' in that it does deal with recipes by region with an introduction that explains the geographical, historical, and climactic reasons for the prevailing cuisine in each region. Rome (Latium), for example, is all about sheep (as the city was founded by a tribe of nomadic sheepherders) and pigs (since from the time of the Roman Empire, the city of Rome was the center of hog butchering for the region. Similarly, Genoa and its region, Liguria, is shown to have a cuisine which is very similar to southern Italy due to the role of Genoa as a major medieval port and source of imported foods. In addition to recipes and culinary history, the book gives an excellent overview of the wines and cheeses of each region. The coverage of cheeses is especially interesting to someone who knows a lot more about cheeses and the differences between cows and sheep than he does about grapes. The book makes clear, for example, why a cheese like Fontina is a distinctive product of the alpine region of Val d'Aosta, tucked in the seam between France and German speaking Switzerland. Good Italian Fontina is a great cross between the semihard Swiss Gruyeres and Emmentalers and the soft French bries. The book also gives some sidebar coverage to the types of breads native to the regions. These comments are a bit frustrating, as it seems it would have been almost as easy to give us the recipe for Grissini (Piedmontese breadsticks) as to tell us the historical origin of these little lovelies. But, bread is a very big subject and Carol Field's superb `The Italian Baker' has five pages devoted to Grissini recipes. All of Negrin's other virtues would still leave us with a rather thin book if she had chosen to give us recipes for the well-known specialities of each region. Another book with spaghetti Carbonara, artichokes ala Judica, saltimbocca, and potato gnocchi in the chapter on Latium would have been very dull indeed, as these four recipes show up in every book I have seen on the cooking of Rome, and there are many of these books already available. Some well-known regional classics are here, such as Campania's (Naples) Pizza Margherita and Venice's Risi e Bisi (rice and peas), but many of the dishes are not only unfamiliar, but break some rules I learned at Mario Batali's knee, such as the fact that cooks in Campania, Sicily, and Sardinia have no qualms about combining fish and cheese, although the excellent recipe to which this observation is a headnote combines a very mild cheese, Mozzarella, with a very strong tasting fish, salted anchovies. In any case, this recipe is a great variation on the quick Spaghetti Puttanesca style of dish. The selection of dishes in the book as a whole is a very nice mix of pasta, breads, soups, braises, salads, roasts and frys. As the book is organized by geography rather than by course or type of dish, a supplementary table of contents organizing all dishes by type of dish would have been a very nice addition. This is not a book from which you will want to learn how to make bread or pasta. For those, I suggest you go to Carol Field and Marcella Hazan respectively, but the bread and pizza recipes in this book are pretty good. It's just that if things don't work out, you have no guidance on how to correct your mistakes. The recipes end with an excellent little chapter on basic Italian recipes for broths, sauces and doughs. The veggies in the chicken broth are cooked a bit too long for my taste. I am pretty sure you have sucked all the goodness out of your carrots, celery, and onions in three hours, so why go stew them for six. The book ends with a very nice list of American sources, most of which are located in New York City. The introduction to each region includes the addresses of restaurants, shops, and culinary schools in that region. If you are a foodie and are planning a trip to Italy, this information can be invaluable. Even if you simply want to access these establishments over the phone and can trust your Italian, this is useful, as telephone numbers for each establishment are given. No web sites, unfortunately. I notice that almost all acknowledgments are to Italian sources. This inspires a lot of confidence in me, as does the facing bibliography which lists many Italian language sources plus many English language sources, all of which I recognize as important culinary authorities such as Clifford Wright, Alan Davidson, Fred Plotkin, and my favorite Claudia Roden. My knowledge of Italian is not up to the task of knowing whether this is correct, but I am puzzled by the fact that every other writer I know refers to the modern region around Rome as Lazio, while Ms. Negrin uses Latium, which sounds very archaic. I strongly recommend this as a first book on Italian regional cuisine, to be read before taking on Roden's or Root's classic works. Comment | (Report this)