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| Splendid Table, The | 
 enlarge | Authors: Lynne R. Kasper, Louis B Wallach Inc.
Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $29.73
You Save: $10.22 (26%)
New (7) Used (11) from $19.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 853567
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 544
ASIN: B0002OKA7M
Publication Date: September 21, 1992
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Just when you thought you knew the best of Northern Italy, along comes Lynne RossettoKasper to introduce you to Emilia-Romagna, a fertile wedge between Milan, Venice, and Florence, as gastronomically important as any land in the world. The lush homeland of balsamic vinegar, Prosciutto di Parma, tortellini, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, this is a region venerated by Italy's food cognoscenti. "Ask an Italian where to take only one meal in Italy, and, after recommending his mother's house, he will more than likely send you to EmiliaRomagna,"writes Kasper. A cuisine at once voluptuous and refined, the dishes of Emilia-Romagna's kitchen are literally irresistible. just listen to the names"Little" Spring Soup from the 17th Century, His Eminence's Baked Penne, Modena Crumbling Cake. Then imagine sitting down to a dish of Hot Caramelized Pears with Prosciutto, a Risotto of Red Wine with Fresh Rosemary or a Pie of Polenta and Country RagU The first American book to present the food of this singular northern region, The Splendid Table is an Italian cookbook for the nineties. It will take you from Parma, Bologna, Modena, Ravenna, and Ferrara to tiny villages in the foothills of the Apennines, from Renaissance banquet halls to the simplest of farmhouses, offering history, folklore, and substantive cooking tips along the way. Among the things you will find are:
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
My favorite source for stupendous dinner parties November 3, 1999
46 out of 49 found this review helpful
I've owned this book since it first came out in 1992, and it occupies a special place in my cooking library -- eye-level shelf for easy reach. The salad of tart greens with prosciutto and warm balsamic dressing has been my first course for many outstanding dinner parties, including several on New Year's Eve. Other particular favorites - the lamb, garlic & potato roast, maccheroni with baked grilled vegetables, torta barozzi, and chestnut ricotta cheesecake. Ms. Kasper's outstanding knowledge of this regional Italian cuisine is equally matched by her understanding of how a home chef times and assembles a multi-course meal. I'm now ordering her new book, The Italian Country Table, and hope to be just as impressed.
The very best regional Italian cookbook! Buy It! July 26, 2005
26 out of 26 found this review helpful
`The Splendid Table' by Lynne Rossetto Kasper is simply the most splendid book I have read on a regional cuisine and it is by far and away the best of the three books on the cuisine of Emilia-Romagna, even though the other two, `Biba's Taste of Italy' by Biba Caggiano and `Recipes from My Two Villages' by Mario Batali are excellent, as far as they go. Ms. Caggiano's book is simply a collection of recipes from Emilia-Romagna and Mario's book is more of a personal diary of recipes than a thorough examination of a historical cuisine.
Ms. Kasper's book, in the year it was published, won both the James Beard and Julia Child (IACP) cookbook awards, which is roughly the same as winning both the Academy award and the Foreign Press Writers award for best picture. And, I believe this book deserved all the attention it has received. Even Mario, who has his own book on the subject, made a special point to mention this book on his `Molto Mario' show. Since I have owned the book for over a year, it is one of those cases where I deeply regret having taken so long to get to studying the volume.
All that remains, then, is to point out what it is which makes the book so good.
For starters, it covers every aspect of a region's cuisine. That is, it deals with the history, the agriculture, and the economy of the region as well as the great recipes. And, what a background we have to relate. Emilia-Romagna is not just another region in one of the world's great culinary countries. It is THE very heart and soul of that culinary tradition, even more than the fabled provinces of Tuscany (Florence) in the north and Campagna (Naples) in the south. It is the home of Italy's three most important non-wine food products, Proscuitto de Parma, Parmesano-Reggiano, and Balsamic Vinegar. On top of that, it is also the home of some of the most famous fresh pasta dishes to come out of Italy plus several of the most famous salume products from Italy (witness the name Bologna, the region's capital city, given to some of these products).
While this coverage is necessary for a complete book on this subject, it is not enough. And, this book gives us the most important component, an excellent selection of very well written recipes. And, with over five hundred pages to fill, Ms. Kasper has given us several different takes on many of the more interesting recipes. A fine example is the famous ragu Bolognese, which is offered up in at least six different variations, each for a slightly different purpose or from a different background.
Never having studied this northern (generally tomatoless) sauce in detail before, I am struck by how similar it is to the most common recipes for Texas chili. It has no beans, the meat is diced and browned, not ground, and tomato and other spices are added sparingly. In the place of dried chiles, the ragu includes cinnamon (in several of the more traditional recipes). One very odd facet of these recipes is that where a Bay leaf is specified, the author calls for the California bay leaf rather than the milder Turkish bay leaf.
The recipes are organized like all good Italian cookbooks, by course. The chapters are:
The Antipasto Course
Ragus
Essential Sauces and Stocks (In no other book have I seen such a thorough treatment of Italian broths and stocks. Ms. Kasper includes the simple traditional `brodo' but adds much more, highlighted by the rich `Il sugo de carne' or meat essence.)
Pastas
The Sweet Pastas of the Renaissance (So, not only do we get modern dishes, we also get recipes for historical dishes which one usually never finds outside a book specializing in Renaissance cooking).
Risotto, Soup, and Vegetable First Courses
Second Courses
Vegetable Side Dishes
Breads
Desserts
Aside from the atypical choice of the California bay, nothing in this book disagrees with anything I have seen from any other authority on Italian cooking. In fact, Ms. Kasper generally improves on other advice by giving more details and a finer turn to her information on ingredients, techniques, and background. I am especially happy to see recipes for some of the more complicated dishes which simply never find their way into less ambitious books, such as `bomba di riso', a northern Italian analogue to the pasta `timbale' of the south. And, while many books cover bread making in a very superficial manner, this book not only does justice to this difficult subject, it covers many of the more arcane flatbreads which tend to be overshadowed by pizza from Naples and foccacia from Genoa. Her chapter on desserts also gives the lie to Sr. Batali's often-repeated statement that the Italians are not big on sweet desserts. While many of these may have grown out of French and Austrian influences, there are tortes and tarts aplenty to enliven an Italian themed entertainment.
Ms. Kasper also gives us a very nice little guide to ingredients, mail order sources, and a bibliography composed almost entirely of Italian language sources.
It is not hard to see how Ms. Kasper has been able to produce such a great book. Elizabeth David lived in Italy and studied its cuisine for a year before producing her excellent `Italian Food'. Ms. Kasper has spent the better part of a lifetime, including five years living in Bologna, studying this cuisine. It is no surprise that the recipe writing in this book rivals that of Julia Child in `Mastering the Art of French Cooking', as this author has spent about the same time mastering her subject before committing it to paper.
Any culinary library that has any pretensions to being complete must include a copy of this book!
 A Very SPLENDID Cookbook! August 5, 2000
21 out of 22 found this review helpful
I have had this book since just after it was published, and it remains my authority on northern Italian cuisine. Lynne Rossetto Kasper has compiled an amazing quantity of quality recipes from the Emilia-Romagna region. As the Italian Food Host @ BellaOnline, and a collector of over 100 Italian cookbooks I would highly recommend this book to anyone who appreciates northern Italian cuisine. Ms. Rossetto adds a little comentary on each recipe's history that is very interesting and her food photograph's are stunning. My only complaint about this book is that there are not more of these glorious photographs!
Mouth-watering Balsamic Roast Chicken March 21, 2001
21 out of 22 found this review helpful
The Balsamic Roast Chicken is simply splendid. I use free-range chicken parts and rub the garlic-rosemary paste under the skin (I make more of the paste than the recipe calls for). The chicken is delicious even without the balsamic vinegar--moist and tender. I love the recipe for sprucing up canned chicken broth, too--use fat-free broth and you can skip a step or two. The Green Beans Bolognese are absolutely wonderful, as well. I am looking forward to trying more recipes from this book and wowing my dinner guests (again)! YUM!
Believe the hype! March 11, 2000
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
I own over a dozen Italian cookbooks, and this is by far my favorite. At the minimum, every recipe I have made from this book has been very good. Most are much better. If you do not want a regional cookbook, try Marcella Hazan, the Julia Childs of Italian Cuisine. But buy this one too. Your friends and neighbors will thanks you.
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