Lidia's Italy and Cucina of Le Marche

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Here are two books on Italian cuisine that, at first glance, couldn't be more different. The first is Lidia Bastianich's Lidia's Italy (Alfred Knopf 2007) is a companion book to her new PBS series, Lidia's Italy. The book covers 10 regions of Italy and Istria in Croatia where she was born and raised. She introduces each region and its geography and offers some recipes. Her daughter, Tanya, also writes about aspects of the art history of each region. It is fun to read, but it is really meant to be used after watching the series to make the dishes she presents. Lidia runs a tourism company, Esperienze Italiane with Tanya, so the book also serves as a grand advertisement. The audience for the book, presumably, is as interested in visiting Italy as cooking the dishes. It is her sixth book. Lidia's Italy shows off the spectacular differences in regional Italian cuisine that make eating in Italy so exciting. Each chapter has a few soups or appetizer recipes, a few pastas or egg dishes, and a few meat or fish dishes, followed by desserts. It is enough for a taste of the region. Through travel, you come to recognize the similarities and differences between various places and regions of Italy. Tasting and cooking food of a place enlarges the understanding of a territory and its people. (p. xiii) The chapter on Maremma, in Tuscany is perhaps most intriguing. Lidia relates that she and her son Joseph and Mario Batalli bought a vineyard in the village of La Mozza (thus the name of Nancy Silverton and Mario's restaurant in Los Angeles). She befriends Alma Amaddi, a widow who lives nearby and is an accomplished home cook. The first recipe has the intriguing title of Alma's Cooked Water Soup (pp. 169-170). But the pale name in no way reflect the savor and satisfaction of this vegetable soup. It has great depth of flavor and when served Alma's way with a poached egg and country bread in a bowl, it is a complete meal. The soup is made of swiss chard, parsely, a little tomato paste and, of course a sprinkling of pecorino cheese. It is easy to imagine that Alma would never write a\this recipe down or make the soup in exactly the same way twice. From the Maremma, Lidia also includes lots of recipes for meat, including two similar dishes: Pappardelle with Long-cooked Duck Sugo (p. 183) and Pappardelle with Long-cooked Rabbit Sugo (p. 187). She urges the reader to try both, rightly, because the differenced in the meat and the differences in the aromatics added. The duck sugo includes porcini and plenty of garlic, while the rabbit includes even more garlic, red wine and oil-cured olives. Lidia also includes a rich recipe for wild boar, Fillet of Wild Boar with Prune and Apple Sauce (p. 193) in which the wine marinade becomes the base for the sauce with the addition of apples and prunes. She suggests both where to purchase domestic boar and a substitution of pork tenderloin. Lidia's Italy is an overview of Italian cuisine, a little of everything, including the people who create and eat the food, and the art and architecture that surrounds it. The book's strength is the background television show, the story of her journey through Italy, that weaves all of this together. The second book is Fabio Trabocchi's Cucina of Le Marche: A Chef's Treasury of Recipes from Italy's Last Culinary Frontier (Ecco 2006), written with the prolific Peter Kaminsky, is about a region Lidia does not visit on her show. Fabio, chef of Le Maestro at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner in McLean, VA. This is an in depth look at a marvelous cuisine by a chef who grew up in Le Marche and is well grounded in the cuisine of the region. The recipes are complex, though some have been simplified so that they can be prepared in a home kitchen, with ingredients available to most Americans. The food of Le Marche shares some connections with the rest of Italian food, but with marked differences: Yet as the great food writer Waverly Root observed in The Food of Italy, in modern times the variations in cuisines of Le Marche might be thought of as dialects rather than different culinary languages, because not only does all of Le Marche share a common isolation from the rest of Italy, each province has coastal food, the products of intensively farmed midlands, and the wild harvest of the mountains. (p. 2) The Appetizer and Other Small Dishes chapter starts with an unusual recipe for Fried Stuffed Olives Ascolana Style (p. 14) in which the large olives are stuffed with various meats from pork butt to prosciutto and liver and deep fried. It is like reinventing a country pate served with olives. There are also various flatbreads, crescia and piadina, toped with cracklings (or pancetta) on page 24 and prosciutto, mozzarella and arugula on page 26. There are rich soups, like Chestnut Soup (p. 38) invented by Fabio, and Chickpea Soup (p. 40) a rustic, hearty soup that reflects Moorish and Arab origins of many dishes. Searching Fabio's book for recipes similar to Lidia's, you find plenty that use wild game, plentiful in Le Marche. Papardelle with Wild Boar Ragu (p. 72) includes plenty of garlic and dry red wine. He also has a recipe for Potato Gnocchi with Duck Ragu (p. 130) that calls for porcini, red wine and cloves. In our house it fell to me to pick the duck for the ragu that would be served with the gnocchi for our big Sunday lunch….I was quite aware that myy choice represented a tradedy for the duck, so I considered the fate of our main ingredient as seriously as a judge at a murder trial. No wonder he became a chef. Easter is as important to Italians as Thanksgiving is to Americans. Fabio includes a marvelous Easter Cheese and Black Pepper Cake (p. 29, perfect for next month's holiday. It’s a cheese savory cake baked in a panettone mold with Caciotta d'Urbino and and two other cheeses. He also includes a marvelous Easter Lamb recipe (p. 171), that includes a lamb stew, fried artichokes and a rack of lamb. All you need to add are the olive branches to decorate the table. Cucina of Le Marche is full of wonderful stories about Trabocchi's family and his education in food. His canvas is one region that he knows intimately, and which is full of amazing tastes and flavors. Though there is no accompanying television show, the stories and recipes are vivid, complex and evocative. Reading Lidia's Italy and Cucina of Le Marche together is grasping that Italian cuisine is both regional and united at the same time. On the cover of Fabio's book is a single pod on a white background, marbled red and split open to reveal the plump white beans inside. The cover of Lidia's book is Lidia herself, smiling and carrying a basket heaped with vegetables, fat white asparagus, carrots and eggplant. She is the star of her book, and the food of Le Marche is the star in Fabio's. Previous articles: TIME for Mario James Beard Awards: Dearth of Top Women Chefs? Todd English: Winner Gets "English is Italian" Nancy Silverton and Mario Batali's Mozza [Cookbook Reviews - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging, Lidia Bastianich, Fabio Trabocchi --> back to Super Chef