The Talisman Italian Cookbook: Italy's bestselling cookbook adapted for American kitchens.

The Talisman Italian Cookbook: Italy's bestselling cookbook adapted for American kitchens. | Ada Boni | From Grandma, With Love

books:

The Talisman Itali...

	The Talisman Italian Cookbook: Italy's bestselling cookbook adapted for American kitchens. Ada Boni Crown, 1950 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 13 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Il Talismano is and has been for over 50 years the one great standard Italian cookbook. It is to Italians what Joy of Cooking is to Americans. Containing in simple and clear form the best recipes for all the foods that we associate with Italian cuisine, it covers all the regional variations of Italian cooking: Milanese, Bolognese, Venetian, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Veronese, and Florentine.

Appetizers range from the simply elegant, like Cantaloupe and Prosciutto and Artichoke Hearts in Olive Oil, to the sublime, like Tunnied Veal and Crostini of Mozzarella and Anchovies. Soups include Stracciatella, Fish Brodetto Rimini Style, and Tuscan Minestrone.

No part of Italy is very far from the sea, a fact reflected in the variety and quality of Italian seafood preparations: Flounder with Black Butter Sauce, Lobster alla Diavolo, Mullet in Piquant Sauce, Scungilli Marinara, and Shrimp Buongusto. For the landlocked there are recipes for Beefsteak alia Pizzaiola, Ossobuco, Saltimbocca, Scaloppine al Marsala, Loin of Pork with Milk, Chicken Cacciatora, Chicken Livers with Sage, Wild Duck with Lentils, and Rabbit in Egg Sauce.

Pasta is perhaps Italy's greatest contribution to world cuisine, and The Talisman contains dozens of authentic recipes like Homemade Ravioli, Green Lasagna Modena Style, and Spaghetti Marinara. There are recipes for Polenta, the Italian cornmeal preparation, as well as rice dishes and pizza.

Finally, Italian desserts are explored in full: Almond Macaroons, Pine Nut Cookies, Ricotta Pie, Zeppole, and Zuppa Inglese. There is also a glossary (complete with pronunciation guide) to Italian cooking terms.

For the American edition of The Talisman, all weights, measurements, instructions, and ingredients have been adapted to American usage. The result is a collection of recipes that are as easy to prepare as they are delicious to eat.

for more information click here

Great, classic cookbook

Simple, authentic recipes. Many recipes in this book have become family favorites for us. This book sits next to The Joy of Cooking on the bookshelf in my kitchen.

From Grandma, With Love

When I moved away from home and then returned to visit my grandmother, I decided it would be a good idea to get her recipes. She would create a feast every Sunday for our family and I wanted to carry on the tradition. Imagine my surprise when she handed me this cookbook and said, "they are all in here." Naturally, Grandma would experiment with the recipes, here and there, but the basics are in there just waiting for your personal touch.

Note: These are old world recipes, not what you would expect from a cookbook published today. Be prepared to start from scratch.

for more information click here

Good traditional Italian recipes

An Italian cookbook that is very traditional. . . . The introduction by Mario Pei highlights this: "It may be emphasized that this is an Italian, not an Italo-American cookbook. The recipes here listed describe dishes which are regularly eaten throughout the length and breadth of the Italian peninsula rather than dishes which are the specialty of a single Italian region, or those which have grown up in Italian communities in America." The end result, Pei observes, is that "a large number of these dishes will be almost totally unfamiliar to the American reader."

The book is divided into many sections, starting with antipasto, going through soups, egg dishes, cheese, and so on through macaroni, spaghetti, rice, to pizza, and finishing with desserts and beverages. All in all, the cookbook covers a lot of territory.

Many of the recipes will not be so simple to manage, if one wants to put something together quickly. Other reviews have mentioned this in one way or another.

However, there are some good recipes in this cookbook, traditional as they might be, that promise a nice taste treat. Among these are Beefsteak Hunter Style, Ragout of Beef with Tomato Sauce, Pork Chops in Tomato Sauce, Pork Chops Modena Style, Macaroni with Ricotta, and so on. Again, some recipes call for an awful lot of up front work that many readers won't be interested in. But there are also many others that can be done quite handily.

A good book to add to one's cooking library.

for more information click here

The Talisman Cookbook

This is a excellent collection of recipes and includes many that are not found in other cookbooks. I have been using this book for years and am replacing a very old copy which I ordered from Ronzoni years ago.

The dangers of outlasting your audience

You would think that the success of The Silver Spoon, the long-standing Italian kitchen bible printed by Editoriale Domus and remade as a tour de force of graphic design by Phaidon Press, would have put Random House and Editore Colombo on notice that it's time to update The Talisman to modern standards. Alas, no interest seems to have been taken in that, and the Crown International series, once a flagship series of great international cookbooks, has rotted on the vine for years. That's beyond sad -- this abridged translation from 1950, though great for its time, is utterly insufficient for modern tastes and really comes up short in the territory it covers.

Oh, it's cheap. That's always a good thing. It benefited greatly from the consulting of linguist Mario Pei, who I've always admired for writing one of the most accessible and enjoyable books on historical Romance linguistics I've ever found. But unlike one of the other books from this series that I have, Viennese Cooking by Olga and Adolf Hess, the Crown Talisman deletes much of the less-than-fully-Italian material, leaving it interesting enough as a list of Italian recipes but arguably failing in its function as an anthropological document on the food of early 20th century Italy. And it shies away from providing the Italian names of dishes, a regrettable mistake that even other books in the series don't always make. And of course, the common objection that seems to crop up far too much when translated cookbooks make it to the US market -- the original metric measurements aren't there.

It's time to update the Talisman and bring it all the way into English the way Phaidon did with the Silver Spoon. In the meantime, unless you absolutely have to have it in English, learn some Italian and see if you can order it from the publisher. It's about US$50 from the original publisher, though I don't know how much shipping would cost.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

products you might be interested in