The Italian Cookery Course By Katie Caldesi
As with every cuisine, Italian food is much more diverse than an outsider would assume by eating in just restaurants. Yes, we're all familiar with pizza, pasta, carpaccio and tiramisu - even non-Italian restaurants serve these. But Italian cuisine varies from region to region, and even from town to town.
British chef Katie Caldesi, along with her Italian husband, owns Italian restaurants in Britain and runs a cookery school, La Cucina Caldesi, in London. She admits in her introduction that Italian food is too diverse to allow for an all-encompassing volume, saying that each family has their own recipe for ragu that's been handed down from generation to generation - and to that family, their way of making it is the correct way.
The book progresses the way Italian meals do, starting with wine and bread and going through the courses to end with desserts, cheese and preserves. Each chapter has 'master classes' on subjects such as bread, antipasti, making pasta (including cappelletti and gnocchi), cleaning and filleting fish, cleaning and preparing octopus and jointing a rabbit. Caldesi gives recipes for dishes we've all probably tasted before (in one version or another) and less familiar dishes such as spelt soup; rice volcanoes (cone-shaped fritters stuffed with ragu, peas and fontina cheese); oven-baked salmon with pistachio and honey crust; pot-roast pheasant with orange, chestnuts and sultanas; and nut tart with honey and mustard fruits.