Classico e Moderno: Essential Italian Cooking: A Cookbook

I’ve read many of the reviews, and yes there are small errors in instructions verses the photos included. As to one commenters feeling that dishes are dumbed down and simple. Well, Italian food for the most part is simplistic and you are free to gussy them up if you desire. For me, it is a great book to focus on the traditional and then see what a great chef can do with it to make the dishes more contemporary. I bought my copy used an it came as if it had never been opened. It came with a thick plastic jacket over the paper jacket which is a nice touch if you plan to use it in the kitchen. I wish more cookbooks came this way. It will take some time to read through it all….it’s a rather long book. Worth every penny.

I had high hopes for this book based on a number of laudatory reviews from the press and luminaries within the industry. Overall, I thought the book was okay.It's divided into two parts, a "classic" Italian recipes section and a "modern" recipes section which may be Italian-inspired, but which have in many cases very little that's Italian about them.The recipes are aimed at a home chef of average skills, and I was hoping that they might be a little bit more of a restaurant grade. The modern recipes are dumbed down attempts to recreate more sophisticated dishes, but this dumbing down process has made the recipes much more lackluster than their original counterparts.A number of the recipes omit important steps that would be necessary to make the recipes palatable. For example, there are a handful of recipes which call for razor clams, but the only preparation of the clams is that they be "scrubbed". Razor clams have a sand sack and require careful and knowledgeable cleaning to be edible. These recipes will almost certainly fail for the average home chef.Another problem I have with the book is with the photography. There are a lot of stock photos, and the pictures for the recipes are often misleading. For example, in the modern meat recipes, most of the meats have been cooked sous vide, as evidenced by the way the pink of the meat extends all the way to the edge, where it meets with a nice sear. But none of the recipes are sous vide, and so the actual dish will look nothing like the picture. A recipe for rabbit loin wrapped in bacon gives no instruction for stretching the bacon, and instructs you to wrap the loin once, but the photo clearly shows thin-cut, stretched bacon which has been wrapped multiple times around the loin. The dish will probably taste just fine - the recipe looks good - but the outcome will look nothing like the photo.Overall this is a mildly enjoyable book to read, but it fails to find its niche. It's too complicated and incomplete for the average home chef, and too dumbed-down and basic for the serious cook.And it's very expensive for what it is.If you're looking for a good classic Italian cookbook, I would recommend Made in Italy: Food & Stories by Locatelli or Cooking by Hand by Bertolli. If you're looking for more challenging modern dishes, there exist a wide array of better choices you might consider.

This book is a great resource to have, and I recommend it to a bunch of people already. It is not for the home cook however as a few of the techniques are a bit advanced. I bought this when I was helping design the menu in one of the restaurants I worked in, and it gave me plenty of inspiration. Now that I changed careers I still crack it open and make a few of the recipes for my wife and I. Especially since we are rocking the Mediterranean Diet.

I am new to Italian cooking and had no idea whose book to try first. I remembered seeing Michael White on Anthony Bourdaine's show No Reservations so I decided to go with his book. I have only tried a few recipes, but things went well. The Tortelli De Ricotta is wonderful! If you're comfortable in the kitchen, the recipes are not difficult. There are also some great pictures of dishes and scenery. In the back of the book is a list of sources for finding some of the ingredients you will need, what a great feature.

My favorite italian cookbook by far. Photographs are perfect. Recipies run from rustic to complex, but are reasonable for the home chef. Strong on technique. Michael White's Marea is my "go to" manhattan eatery and many of his classics are in this book. I've cooked about a third of the recipies and haven't encountered a dud yet.

I plan on traveling to Italy as my right of passage into the world of professional cooking, and this book only reinforced that dream of mine. In this book are incredible recipes given to you from one of the best possible sources. I had no idea who Michael White was before opening this book, and I now sincerely respect the man.

It's a basic italian cook book. If you don't have one try this one.I got it as part of the first cookbooks for my college apartment. It was a good deal and I enjoy the added italian inspiration.

Beautifully illustrated with classic and modern recipes. We've had to modify several of them to make them work well, so, a little experience helps. Written by a chef who thinks more about how to create wonderful meals In a restaurant, not the home. Still, it has been a pleasure to use it.

The recipes are easy to make and the results are consistently good.