Molto Gusto: Easy Italian Cooking

Alora. The recipes are simple - as simple as "Spaghetti with Butter" - the ingredients fresh and for the most part available down the street at your local grocer or in the town square at Saturday's Farmers' Market . And oh, so very flavorful.Among my favorites is "Spaghetti con la Sarde," but all you need to do is give me a $1.39 can of sardines and I'm happy. Batali's version adds fennel bulb, fennel seed, grated orange zest and your own freshly pan fried bread crumbs. Like I said, very flavorful. If you don't like sardines, try it with tuna. I told my wife we were having smoked trout and she savored it.The recipes are bundled into seven what-you-would-expect categories, from antipasti, bruschetta & cheese to insalata, pasta and pizza. Each of the sections includes food lore and very, very useful basic information such as "Ten Most Important Pasta Cooking Tips." Tip #4: never boil a sauce until you've added the pasta. Tip #5 reminds the cook that "The sauce should always be well integrated with the pasta, unctuous, as supple as silk, and homogenous. I get the homogenous part but I'm not sure how to make the sauce "unctuous."Here however is a big caveat. All the reviews here so far have referred to the hardcover version. Don't set your expectations too high if you're planning to download "Gusto" to your Kindle. At least on the K2, as I did.A blurb on Amazon says the electronic book is "optimized" for the large-format Kindle DX.On the K2 the information and recipes are certainly readable. But the packaging is a little off. For example, each of the sections is preceded with a series of very large photos of the recipes that follow. I imagine that in the hardcover edition these photo spreads are very inviting and point out the beauty in simplicity and texture, not to mention color.In Kindle Land, the photos are black and white. Kind of muddy, too. One photo fills a page. On the next page is a single-phrase cutline. In the hardcover version, I imagine one recipe fits nicely on one page. On the Kindle the page breaks are haphazard, the cheese is on one page and the sauce on the next. The information is all there to be sure; the packaging however is somewhat annoying.Be warned to be forearmed. I was willing to put up with the could-surely-be-better Kindle formatting because I found the proof to be in the tasting and the enjoying. Prego.

A nice cookbook--and a different cookbook--from Mario Batali. In his words at the outset (Page 13): "What you will certainly notice quite quickly is that this cookbook is radically different from all the others that I have written in its complete lack of traditional main dishes."The book is divided into several sections--vegetable antipasti, seafoods and meat antipasti, bruschetta and cheese, insalata (salad), pasta, pizza, and gelato and sorbetto. No super protein dishes here. Photographs are nice and the glossy pages add a richness to the feel of this cookbook. But, it's the recipes that are at the heart of any cookbook, and there are some nice, makeable recipes here.An example of vegetable antipasti is "Cherry tomatoes with creme fraiche and chives. Ingredients: cherry or grape or pear tomatoes, halved; sherry vinegar; flaky sea salt; creme fraiche; extra virgin olive oil; chive for garnish. Very simple to make and a nice side dish (or starter dish) for a meal. Under salad, a three bean salad. Ingredients: kosher salt, green beans, chick peas, cannellini beans, chopped fresh mint, red wine vinaigrette, and flaky sea salt and coarse black pepper. Again, easy to assemble. I like such salads, and I have penciled in this recipe to try it out. Another salad that intrigues me is "Arugula with Tomato Raisins." Again, pretty straightforward recipe with the promise of a tasty salad.Pasta? I have made something like this, but Batali's recipe looks like it would have a fuller taste. "Spaghetti with garlic and oil." Ingredients: kosher salt; extra virgin olive oil; garlic cloves; hot red pepper flakes; parsley; spaghetti; Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Again, I have made something similar, but this has a few extra "tricks" to it. Some other pasta dishes that intrigue me: Penn with pomodoro cotto; Penn alla puttanesca; Pennette with pesto.Want some pizza? Take a look at his Prosciutto and Arugula pizza. Yum! Looks tasty.And so on.I really like the lighter dishes, the healthier dishes that appear in this volume. Worth taking a look at!

It really is very, very basic. The flavour combinations are good though.

Same Same Old. This guy just repeats the same things over and over and expects to sell millions of books. all you need is one book and you know his whole cuisine and life, BORING.

Good book, but nothing special.

great book