Savoring Italy: Recipes and
Reflections on Italian Cooking by
Michele Scicolone
My Favorite Cookbook!
Savoring Italy leads readers-cooks and armchair travelers alike-on a
gastronomic tour of one of the worlds most beloved cuisines. Part recipe
collection, part travelogue, this sophisticated survey of the Italian table, by
award-winning author Michele Scicolone, is an enduring culinary tribute to
the countrys diverse regional traditions. Containing more than 140
authentic recipes, a captivating text rich in personal experience and fresh
insights, and a wealth of dazzling illustrations-lush scenic and food
photography, enchanting watercolors, a beautiful hand-drawn map-
Savoring Italy is an unforgettable portrait, in both word and image, of a
universally admired kitchen.
Personal Review: Savoring Italy: Recipes and Reflections on
Italian Cooking by Michele Scicolone
`Savoring Italy' is a title written by Michele Scicolone and published in the
Williams-Sonoma series of oversized, lavishly photographed culinary tours
of important foodie centers around the world. I bought this book before I
was very familiar with Ms. Scicolone's abilities and track record as an
Italian recipe writer, so I tended to dismiss it as bargain table fodder. But
now, in looking back at my unreviewed backlist, I find this volume is
something of a buried treasure.
Scicolone has most recently made a big splash in the Italian cookbook
world with her 1000 Italian Recipes book, another highly formulaic volume
that I still found very worthy alongside the heavyweights of Italian
cookbook writing such as Bastianich, Hazan, and Bugialli. I did compare
some recipes in this volume to Mario Batali's latest, `Molto Italy' and found
the newly crowned (2005 James Beard Awards) best chef in the country to
have the advantage on Ms. Scicolone's 1000 recipes in interest and in
quality of procedure.

I have done a similar comparison of our volume `Savoring Italy' to the
encyclopedic `1000 Italian Recipes' and find a similar result. For starters, I
looked for six different recipes from `Savoring Italy' in the larger book and
found only two with exactly the same Italian name. Two of the six had
similar recipes in the two books. Two of the recipes in `Savoring Italy' had
no close counterparts in `1000 Italian Recipes'.
What is more interesting is that where the recipes had the same or a
similar name, the ingredients and procedure in `Savoring Italy' were always
more elaborate than the corresponding recipe in `1000 Italian Recipes'. For
example, `1000 Italian Recipes' has a recipe for stuffed beef rolls in tomato
sauce (`Braciole al Pomodoro') with eight ingredients while `Savoring Italy'
has a similar English named dish (`Braciole di Manzo') which has twelve
ingredients, adding prosciutto, pine nuts, raisins, and parsley, and
substituting Provolone cheese for Pecorino Romano. I see similarly more
elaborate treatments for all the recipes I check, including such classics as
Caponata. Oddly, while `1000 Italian Recipes' salts the eggplant in its
caponata recipe, `Savoring Italy' does not. Like Joel Robuchon (actually,
because of Joel Robuchon's statements), I prefer avoiding the eggplant
salting and prefer to look for younger fruits to avoid the bitterness of older
produce.
I take issue with the reviewer who says these are simple recipes.
Compared even to Scicolone's major reference book, they are more
complicated.
So, on the recipe front, the big picture book is a totally worthy addition for
anyone who happens to collect Italian cookbooks, or happens to like big,
glossy culinary books in general.
I am not a very good critic of photography, but my gut feeling about the
pics in this book is that they are above average, but not of the very highest
quality. The only real technical issue I saw was that inside shots seemed a
bit grainy compared to those done in full outdoor sunlight. But, for a book
retailing at a smidge below $40, they are pretty good. Their selection of
subjects was equally good, in that it did not concentrate too much on the
very familiar and avoided the `been there, done that' feeling. My biggest
issue with the pics is that there are several on the early pages of the book
which have no captions. A naïve eye could put some of the pictures
anywhere from California to Greece.
The book has the obligatory culinary map of Italy with provinces and major
cities identified by name among all the cute little produce icons. The non-
recipe text is good, but has little which is revealing to anyone who has read
much of Italian cuisine, or spent more than a few months watching `Molto
Mario' and `Mario Eats Italy' on the Food Network. If you want a good
overview of Italian regional cuisines, see Claudia Roden's `The Food of
Italy, Region by Region' or Waverly Root's `The Food of Italy'.

The glossary on stock foods and wines of Italy is good, but typical of short
treatments. It is good for the casual reader, but not all there for the foodie
or professional. The edge this has over some other books is that it
contains thumbnail instructions on how to make and or prepare things such
as breadcrumbs, beans, and anchovies.
This book is all about the sum of its parts. The recipes are probably more
lavish than you will fine on Nonna's dinner table. These are the more
celebratory versions of classic recipes, saved for special occasions or
served at upscale restorantes. But this format calls for lavish dishes to
match the oversize scale of the pages and the photographs.
Bottom line is that this book is worth its salt. So, if you are looking for a big,
expensive Italian cookbook with evocative pictures and good frills, this one
will give you your money's worth.
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