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Title: LA Terra Fortunata: The Splendid Food and Wine of Friuli-Venezia Giulia by Fred Plotkin ISBN: 0-7679-0611-X Publisher: Broadway Books Pub. Date: 08 May, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.29 (7 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Watch out...
Comment: there are problems with the recipes. When the first two recipes I try don't work out I usually give up on the book. The recipe for apple cake with shredded aples etc didn't really work in terms of the proportion of dough to filling for me and the crust had too much of the baking soda or powder (don't have the book with me at the moment) flavor, especially the next day. I started the recipe for butternut squash gnocchi and that seemed off as the squash took much longer to bake and in the fridge there was no draining at all - I cut my losses at that point and did other things with the squash. Then I found a recipe that I had cut out from the NY Times when the book was reviewed for a poppy seed dessert and clearly there is a step missing, also, would the poppy seeds be lightly pounded, pounded to a paste? The NY Times reviewer mentions favorably that the recipes lend themselves to cooking the way a relative would instruct. Well, my mother's "a little bit of this, a little bit of that" instructions frequently do not work and this approach should not be over romanticized. The history of the region section in the beginning is a pleasure.
Rating: 4
Summary: NOT ENOUGH PHOTOS
Comment: This is not a review really.I agree with all the other reviewers that this is a very good book ,but I find annoying the fact that it has only a few photos out of its 400 pages.The book would really be a gem if it was properly illustrated.The couple of dozen photos that it has are just not enough!
Rating: 5
Summary: Lucky Land--Lucky You!
Comment: Why so many cookbooks these days? One reason is that anyone can troll the Internet for a few hours and download enough recipes to make a book with very little effort; some "authors" apparently do just that. Not, however, Fred Plotkin, who has produced here not a book but a feast that demands the attention of any serious cook or food-lover.
Fred Plotkin's field is Italy--all Italy (as in "Italy for the Gourmet Traveler," which you should order) and the obscure and less-known regions of Italy, as in this book, which is centered on Friuli-Venezia Giulia, high in the northeast, and in his previous one on Liguria (order that too, while you're at it), the superb "Recipes from Paradise: Life and Food on the Italian Riviera (order that, too). These regions--their very existence--will come as a surprise to many Americans, who have been led by decades of relentless and superficial media coverage to believe that Italy is Tuscany and that Tuscany is only the area between Florence and Siena.
Plotkin doesn't strip-mine a region and bung a lot of recipes into a book. He explores and absorbs it. He visits Italy frequently and has often lived there for extended periods, sharing the life of regions that call out to him. In this case, he writes--elegantly, feelingly--of a region he has known for more than 25 years. For this reason, people and places come alive as welcoming presences.
Recipes? There are recipes galore here, and you will be happy (I hope) to know that that are not the tired (and overhyped) Tuscan retreads. With its Adriatic coast, this region was deeply involved in the Spice Trade at its height, and so you will find many spices used here, some of which (cumin, for example) will come as a surprise.
I recommend this book for cold winter days. It'll warm you just to read it, and then you can start cooking too.
Bill Marsano is a James Beard Award-winning writer on wine, spirits and food.
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Title: Italy for the Gourmet Traveler by Fred Plotkin ISBN: 0316710709 Publisher: Little, Brown Pub. Date: 03 June, 1996 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Recipes from Paradise : Life & Food on the Italian Riviera by Fred Plotkin ISBN: 0316710717 Publisher: Little, Brown Pub. Date: 12 October, 1997 List Price(USD): $39.00 |
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Title: Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy by Joseph Bastianich, David Lynch ISBN: 0609608487 Publisher: Clarkson N Potter Publishers Pub. Date: 16 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Veneto: Authenic Recipes from Venice and the Italian Northeast by Julia Della Croce, Paolo Destefanis ISBN: 0811823504 Publisher: Chronicle Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: In a Roman Kitchen: Timeless Recipes from the Eternal City by Jo Bettoja, Jo Bettoja ISBN: 0471221473 Publisher: Wiley Pub. Date: 03 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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