Mangia, Little Italy!: Secrets from a Sicilian Family Kitchen - Softcover

Romina, Francesca

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811815331 ISBN 13: 9780811815338

Publisher: Chronicle Books Llc, 1998

Synopsis

For those of us not lucky enough to grow up in our Sicilian grandmother's kitchen in Little Italy, this lively book is the next best thing--a vibrant collection of authentic Italian family recipes and memories related with warmth and humor by Francesca Romina. Interspersed with more than 150 recipes are antique family photographs and charming tales about the adventures, trials, and exploits of Francesca's extended family and friends, as well as tales from the old country. Her grandmother's favorite pizza recipe recalls the origins of pizza parlors in Chicago, while her savory fava and pea soup takes us all the way back to her native village in Sicily. The dishes are often simple, but with the distinctive touches only generations of tradition can create. These are tried-and-true recipes for genuine comfort foods, accompanied by invaluable cooking advice passed down from one master cook to the next. Picturesque turn-of-the-century Little Italy comes boldly to life in this wonderful memoir-cookbook.

About this title

Review:

Mangia, Little Italy! is both a valuable book and a frustrating book. It's valuable for preserving a singular style of cooking, that of the small-town Sicilian cook from early in the century dropped into the Little Italy of New York--an experience repeated all over the nation in one Little Italy or another during the great wave of 20th-century immigration. Where some ingredients were never available, or seldom available, back in Italy--mozzarella, for example, or a plethora of seafood--in Little Italy they were there for the haggling. And as a result, Italian American home cooking changed from all that it was back home to some of what it could be in the New World. This book captures that, and you can put the results on your own table.

The book is frustrating because the tales of the family--of Grandma--while intended to be charming, need the hand of a skilled writer. Francesca Romina is a skilled cook and a skilled cooking teacher. She is not a skilled writer. It throws off the focus of the book, trying to be too many things (personal history, cookbook, food history, urban narrative, family history), and not all of them are accomplished with the same attention to quality.

That said, you'd be a fool not to have a go at the seven-hour Sunday Tomato Sauce, the Pizza with Salted Sardines, the Sicilian Meatloaf, the Fried Mushrooms with Lemon and Garlic, the Sesame Seed Biscuits, or Concetta Di Palo's Ricotta Cheesecake. Romina's careful collection of Italian American home cooking turns up some wonderful dishes you may not have encountered before.

"Eat, Little Italy!" is the exhortation of the title, and that seems the best advice. --Schuyler Ingle

About the Author:

Francesca Romina is a second-generation Sicilian-American. She has taught Italian cooking at the New School, New York University, and Peter Kump's Cooking School, and recently opened New York's Little Italy Cooking School.

About this edition

• Publisher: Chronicle Books Llc
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0811815331
• ISBN 13: 9780811815338
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 349