Mamma Agata - Simple and Genuine By Chiara Lima
Chiara Lima lives up to Hollywood's image of an Italian mother - the type who, after embracing her children, their children and friends, shouts 'basta, basta' as everyone sits down to a table laden with delicious dishes. She start- ed cooking when she was young and became a personal chef at the age of 13, when she cooked for her wealthy employers, whose guests included actor Humphrey Bogart.
Lima opened the Mamma Agata cooking school on the Amalfi Coast in 1994. It's a friendly place that welcomes not just adults but also their offspring (the book has pictures of smiling children - complete with artfully placed daubes of flour on their faces, as they knead pizza dough).
The book delivers what the title promises - recipes for easy, home-style Italian dishes. They don't require specialised equipment, most of the ingredients are easy to source (except, perhaps, for the zucchini blossoms) and the techniques are simple enough, even for a novice. Dishes include rabbit with tomato and olive; squid with potato; fried pizza; risotto with mushroom and sausage; gnocchi with tomato and mozzarella; and lemon cake (said to be one of Bogart's favourites).