The River Cafe Cookbook [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

This is their first and most highly acclaimed book, and the last of their three readily available volumes that I am to review. The book can be viewed on at least three different levels, depending on the reader's level of knowledge of Italian cuisine.

The reader who is innocent of any Italian cuisine outside what they may have seen in the local American Italian restaurant will be quite surprised by the absence of the Italian-American classics such as spaghetti and meatballs, veal Parmesan, lasagna, and chicken Marsala. The better informed reader who has read Lydia Bastianich and watched `Molto Mario' will recognize many true Italian standards such as Panzanella salad, osso bucco, slow-cooked lamb shanks, artichokes alla Giudea, and lots and lots of risotto and polenta recipes. This reader may feel slightly disoriented in that there are very few hints and reminders and pointers about how to complete the various recipes. A perfect example is the Roman recipe for `Carciofi alla Giudea' (Fried artichokes, Jewish style). The recipe in David Downie's authoritative `Cooking the Roman Way' covers three pages while Rogers and Gray take three short paragraphs, occupying a quarter of a page to give the recipe with almost exactly the same ingredients. Part of the difference is that Downie's recipe includes detailed instructions on dealing with and cleaning an artichoke and details on techniques for frying with olive oil. Rogers and Gray dispatch this task in four sentences. In dealing with this book, a second paradigm shift is needed to move from the view of culinary newbie to experienced user of Italian recipes.

As with the fried artichoke example, tips on cooking technique are rare in this book. What is not rare are tips on the selection of ingredients. I can honestly say that this is truly the first book I have seen where the recipes are so simple and the ingredients lists so small that the choice of the proper ingredients is essential to achieving the expected results. Some recipes are so specific that they require olive oil fresh from the harvest in December and January. Oil aged as much as six months will simply be too mild to give the proper brightness to the recipe.

The name of the book `Italian Country' was given to `The River Café Cookbook' when its publication was transplanted from the United Kingdom to the United States. This new title and some few statements in the book give a somewhat misleading picture of the book as a collection of `authentic' recipes from rural Italy. I will just point out that two classic artichoke recipes are well known staples of downtown Rome from antiquity. There are also a few statements about the regional source of some recipes, but these do not make this a treatise on regional Italian cookery. The most important point of view to take with this book is the statement in the first sentence of the introduction which proclaims `... a shared vision (to) cook the food we had eaten in Italian homes but could never find outside Italy...'. A corollary to this vision is that since all the recipes were based on or inspired by Italian home cooking, they are truly easy to do in the British or American kitchen. The only catch is that in spite of the wealth of Italian speciality products available in American megamarts, some critical ingredients may still be a bit difficult to find, and the authors tend to make correct ingredient selection an important part of each recipe. Cavolo nero (black cabbage), for example, a native of Tuscany, has not found its way to my local, well-stocked produce palaces. I also think getting fresh olive oil in January may be a bit of a trick for us colonists. But I will reserve judgment on this until I try next year.

While the book contains many recipes familiar to the journeyman Italian cook, there are also many unusual forms. One favorite is rotolo di spinaci, a rolled pasta akin to strudel with a mushroom, ricotta, and spinach filling. This is one of the rare recipes whose method takes a full page and the accompanying photographs detail the steps in the method. While there are tomatoes aplenty in many recipes, the book has a strongly Northern Italian bent, with the lots of risotto, dried bread, and polenta recipes and relatively few hard pasta recipes. For those who crave spaghetti, take a look at the latest cookbook from the River Café, `Italian Easy from the River Café'. This new volume has close to a dozen spaghetti recipes.

The irony of the book is that in spite of the simplicity of the recipes, this is `graduate level' cooking which expects a fair amount of cooking competence from its readers and a considerable dedication to tracking down the right ingredients. But do not be deterred. The world would be pretty dull if every Italian cookbook covered all the same techniques in the same level of detail. Also do not be deterred by the fairly large number of familiar recipes in this book. Most recipes with common names are different enough for you to learn from the variation. The authors' spaghetti Carbonara, for example, is significantly different from, for example, Mario Batali's recipe.

The styling and photography adds to the joyful feeling of the text without being too obstrusive. And, the translation of Italian dish names is less consistant than it should be in an important book published by Random House.

Highly recommended classic for important Italian recipes.