The Flavors of Sicily: Stories, Traditions, and Recipes for Warm-Weather Cooking - Hardcover

Lanza, Anna Tasca

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517700794 ISBN 13: 9780517700792

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, 1996

Synopsis

The author of the acclaimed The Heart of Sicily brings readers back to her homeland for an enticing look at the summer life, traditions, and food of Sicily. Includes 60 recipes, two 16-page color photo inserts and halftones throughout.

About this title

From the Back Cover

f the acclaimed The Heart of Sicily brings readers back to her homeland for an enticing look at the summer life, traditions, and food of Sicily. Includes 60 recipes, two 16-page color photo inserts and halftones throughout.

Reviews

This small gem of a book occasionally covers some of the same ground as Lanza's The Heart of Sicily, but it doesn't suffer for it. The chapters are organized by month, from March through September, and each month begins with a description of several holidays, traditions and foods associated with it. Some of these associations are expected (e.g., Holy Week in April), but most are delightfully personal (e.g., Lanza visits the island of Pantelleria each year in June, so this month is dedicated to the famed capers, pastries and other foods of this small, rocky island). The recipes reflect Sicily's bounty of fresh vegetables and fish: Poached Sea Bass; Frittata with Bitter Greens; Rice Salad with Tomatoes, Tuna and Capers. There are also plenty of rich pastries, and these tend to be more labor-intensive. Pastry Peaches, for instance, are made by shaping the dough around walnut shell halves, then detaching them after baking and affixing two halves to each other with whipped cream to create each "peach." The recipes are fine, but the charm is in the background material. Readers will envy the pleasure Lanza and family enjoy when opening and drinking the wine her husband's grandfather started collecting in 1880, just before Europe's vineyards were ravaged by blight. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Lanza (The Heart of Sicily, Crown, 1993) runs a cooking school in Sicily, where she and her family also have a vineyard. In this charming "warm-weather" cookbook, she writes about the festivals, foods, and holidays of the late spring and summer months. She starts with the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19, describing the elaborate bread altars and the special dishes associated with this feast day, and ends with the grape harvest in early September and another religious holiday later in the month, discussing as well the wealth of end-of-summer produce?tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, and more. A delightfully personal book, written with style and grace and filled with delicious recipes and insights into all sorts of culinary matters, this is highly recommended.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Individual chapters are filled with personal notes about celebrations, rituals, and fresh foodstuffs of the month, as well as instructions for indigenous dishes. The fare is simple; the only complexities arise in finding Sicilian ingredients or appropriate substitutes. Barbara Jacobs

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarkson Potter
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0517700794
• ISBN 13: 9780517700792
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256