Reviewed by Suzanne Lieurance
I spent several weeks in Italy last summer and developed a love for basic, simple Italian food. There’s nothing as relaxing as sitting down to a glass of wine and some really good pasta. In Venice, a friend and I brought buffalo mozzarella back to our hotel room to snack on. We just couldn’t get enough of the stuff. We kept trying to figure out ways to cram containers of these tasty little white blobs of cheese into our luggage to take home. Needless to say, that didn’t work out.
Now I love to watch Everyday Italian with Giada De Laurentiis on the Food Network. Her recipes are simple, yet elegant, and so many of them are for basic, hearty Italian dishes my family might actually enjoy (the men in my family are ALL picky eaters). Her new cookbook, named after her show, features many of the same recipes I’ve seen her prepare on TV. And, just as she does on her show, De Laurentiis offers little snippets of information in the cookbook that help educate the reader about food in general, and Italian food in particular. I like that. To me, a good cookbook always offers more than tasty recipes. It provides information to feed the reader’s passion for food, cooking, and enjoying life with family and friends. Everyday Italian does that in an easy to follow format.
The one criticism I have of this book is that it includes so many black and white photos of De Laurentiis that really don't illustrate the recipes or cooking techniques. They just make me wonder, How does she stay so slim and still eat all this delicious Italian food? But maybe that'll be the subject of her next cookbook.
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