Sauces & Shapes: Pasta The Italian Way Wins 2014 IACP Award for Best International Cookbook
Industry: Books
SAUCES & SHAPES: PASTA THE ITALIAN WAY is an Italian cookbook showcasing authentic Italian pasta and sauces as they are cooked in Italian homes today.
United States (PRUnderground) March 17th, 2014
Pasta is so universally popular in the United States that it can justifiably be called an American food. SAUCES AND SHAPES: PASTA THE ITALIAN WAY by 2014 IACP award-winning authors Maureen B. Fant and Oretta Zanini De Vita (Norton, Pub Date, $35, illustrated hardcover) makes the case for keeping it Italian with mouthwatering recipes for sauces and soups as cooked in Italian homes today. Anyone who cooks or eats pasta needs this book.
There are authentic versions of Italian timeless culinary classics such as pasta carbonara, Bolognese, marinara, and Alfredo. Better yet, there are plenty of unusual but no less traditional sauces based on roasts, ribs, rabbit, clams, shrimp, eggplant, arugula, and mushrooms, to name but a few.
The straightforward recipes are easy enough for the novice cook yet even professional chefs will grasp the elegance of their simplicity. Here is just a sampling of the scrumptious dishes that await readers of SAUCES & SHAPES: PASTA THE ITALIAN WAY:
· Gnocchi “alla bava.” A soft, voluptuous dish that sublimely blends potatoes and cheese. The finicky are seduced by the comforting creamy texture of the sauce while sophisticated will perceive the wonderful nutty mellow flavor of the cheeses.
· Fettucine Alfredo. Here is the original recipe for fettucine Alfredo as it was served in the internationally renown restaurant, Alfredo all Scrofa. This dish puts its pretenders to shame.
· Pasta with Fresh Herbs. A spring freshness explodes in this lovely green sauce, made throughout Italy, with each of the herbs, the peppery arugula, the bite of the lemon and the flavor of the oil coming forward in perfect harmony.
· Sugo con il pesce spada (Pasta with Swordfish). The delicate yet distinct flavor of swordfish works beautifully in unison with the accompanying light tomato sauce.
· Sugo alla pescatora (Pasta with Mixed Seafood). Hailing from the shores of Anzio, this fragrant, red piatto unico is perfect if you like the assertive flavors of shellfish and tomatoes enhanced with anchovies and garlic.
· Ragu di carne (Pasta Bolognese). Here is the authentic recipe for sauce Bolognese. Guess what? It doesn’t involve tomatoes. Nor garlic. Yet it promises to taste better than any Bolognese you’ve ever tasted.
· Sugo coi carciofi (Pasta with Artichokes). This sauce is nothing short of sumptuous. Eating tender, delicate artichokes and little else on the pasta is a true luxury. A flexible sauce, it works well with almost any pasta and is sure to be a real crowd-pleaser.
SAUCES & SHAPES: PASTA THE ITALIAN WAY offers advice on cooking, serving and eating pasta; how to stock a panty and choose ingredients; recipes for traditional soups; how to make pasta from scratch and generally approaching pasta as much like an Italian as anyone outside Italy can. The authors have includes a bibliography, a glossary of pasta shapes and advice for online shopping for ingredients.
As Amanda Hesser, cofounder off Food52 and author of The Essential New York Times Cookbook succinctly puts it, “Sauces & Shapes is the perfect, curated Italian cookbook. Oretta Zanini De Vita and Maureen B. Fant do the hardest thing of all: they take a seemingly small world—pasta and sauce—and show off its many wonders and surprises…If you like Italian cooking, Sauces & Shapes will become a timeless, cherished companion.”
Buon appetito!
About the Authors
Oretta Zanini De Vita was born in Bologna, where she learned the art of pasta -making as a child in a local convent school. A respected Italian culinary historian, she has written more than forty books on Italian food and its traditions, including the James Beard Award–winning Encyclopedia of Pasta (2010) and Popes, Peasants, and Shepherds: Recipes and Lore from Rome and Lazio (2013), both translated by Maureen Fant. She lives in Rome.
Maureen B. Fant, a native of New York, is a writer and translator who came to live in Rome in 1979 believing that her future lay in classical archaeology. She now writes mostly about Italian food. She is coauthor of Women’s Life in Greece and Rome and Dictionary of Italian Cuisine, among others. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Gourmet, and other periodicals, and she lectures on the food of Rome and ancient Rome.
TITLE: SAUCES & SHAPES: PASTA THE ITALIAN WAY
AUTHOR: Oretta Zanini De Vita and Maureen B. Fant
PUBLICATION DATE: October 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-393-08243-2
PRICE: $35.00 hardcover
With color photograph inserts
CONTACT INFO
Media professionals wishing to review Sauces & Shapes: Pasta The Italian Way or interview its authors should contact GK Zachary 845-493-0468 or email him gilbert@probookmarketing.com
About Sauces and Shapes: Pasta The Italian Way
Pasta is so universally popular in the United States that it can justifiably be called an American food. SAUCES AND SHAPES: PASTA THE ITALIAN WAY by 2014 IACP award-winning authors Maureen B. Fant and Oretta Zanini De Vita makes the case for keeping it Italian with mouthwatering recipes for sauces and soups as cooked in Italian homes today. Anyone who cooks or eats pasta needs this book.
