Proprio Italiano: Authentic Northern Italian Menus and Recipes

Book by Corucinni, Lina Michi

The pleasures of Italian kitchens are so substantial that even with crowded shelves there always seems reason to add more cookbooks. Italian-born Coruccini's collection of recipes rings authentic, yet contemporary and original. She pairs cannellini beans with as unlikely an herb as fresh mint, and recommends roasting a buttery fillet of beef tenderloin after it has been coated in crushed black, white, green and rose peppercorns. Her pasta salad ("Italians prefer dried pasta, as do I," she writes) is loaded with vegetables, dressed with herbs and sparingly sprinkled with olive oil. She serves pasta in a feathery-light (and still savory) salmon sauce. In a more conventional vein, she includes a Lombardy-style Christmas feast, with instructions for creating the traditional Monte Bianco dessert of crisp meringue crowned with a rich chestnut puree. Throughout, practical methods spur time-saving advance preparation. One hopes that casual readers won't be deterred by the amateurish, outdated color photographs that dot and mar the book.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.