My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Authentic Italian cooking–this is right up my alley!! My favorite cuisine packaged in a quality book with gorgeous photographs! It is classic Italian as in a few quality ingredients prepared well. I love the basic brodo recipes, pestos, etc. The soffrito, in my humble opinion, uses way too much olive oil. We made the Tuscan Ragu which uses the soffrito. I kept looking at the recipe for the soffrito and finally decided to cut the oil in half. Honestly, we could have cut it down to 1/4 and it would probably have been perfect. While it was a little oily from too much oil in the soffrito, the flavor of the ragu was out of this world!! It was a huge hit in our family. Let’s just say there weren’t leftovers!

The beginning of this book is fascinating with information, history, tips and more. I love the “Pantry” section! It then moves on to “Ready to Use” which is where you find the recipes for those basic items you would use a lot such as broths, pestos and more. NOW you get to the bones of the book–the recipes!

If you like simple, well cooked food, this is a great cookbook. The reason I dropped it to one star is the heavy over use of oil in the soffrito, and the fact that there are several hard to find ingredients called for. Otherwise, this is a great cookbook.

I received a copy of this cookbook from St. Martin’s Griffin for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.