Adventures of an Italian Food Lover: With Recipes from 213 of My Very Best Friends

Faith Heller Willinger has lived in Florence for more than twenty-five years and has written a cookbook Red, White, and Greens : The Italian Way with Vegetables and a travelog Eating in Italy: A Traveler's Guide to the Hidden Gastronomic Pleasures of Northern Italy. This volume is partly a cookbook and partly a memoir, illustrated with watercolors drawn by her sister. Willinger lives in Florence and regularly leads a small group tour of the local market and then cooks a full meal for her students while explaining what it is like to live and eat "alla italiana". In the course of her teaching, Willinger has apparently visited every part of Italy and made many good friends, 254 of whom are described here. In many ways the human relationships she describes are more interesting than the recipes. Her warmth and wit charm: "I did a recipe in "Red, White and Greens" for Pasta Poma Sarde al Mare: Pasta With Sardines at Sea. It's a concept that I love. It means they're in the sea -- and not in the dish, which is vegetarian. That's so Italian. That whole concept guided my life from then on. It sounds like you're actually having something wonderful when you're missing an ingredient." Willinger's website describes how to buy perfect ingredients (Google on her full name). Best of all, she calls herself a "closet wine geek." I'd love to share a glass or two with her next time I'm in Tuscany. PS: Corby Kummer has a very good review of this book in the March 2008 "Atlantic", with three interesting recipes. Best of all, the article is free to all, not just subscribers to the "Atlantic". Robert C. Ross 2008

"Adventures Of An Italian Food Lover: With Recipes From 254 Of My Very Best Friends" by chef, cooking teacher, and food detective Faith Heller Willinger is a veritable showcase of Italian cuisine shared within the context of Italian culture and sensory experiences. Featuring more than 110 superbly presented and authentic Italian dishes, the 'kitchen cook friendly' recipes range from Leek and Sausage Orzotto; Roast Veal Shank; and Pear Cake with Grappa Sauce; to Spaghetti with Parmigiano-Reggiano and Armando's Extra Virgin; Tuscan Brownies; and Pasta with Mussels and Zucchini Flowers. But what makes "Adventures Of An Italian Food Lover" stand out among other Italian cookbooks are the personal anecdotal stories about the mean and women from whom these simply wonderful recipes were obtained. As much fun to browse through as to cook from, "Adventures Of An Italian Food Lover" is confidently recommended for personal and community library ethnic cookbook collections.

`Adventures of an Italian Food Lover' is by Faith Heller Willinger, a member in very good standing of that informal woman's society of writers on Italian cuisine, having done two previous excellent books on the subject. With this book, she joins fellow society members, Lydia Bastianich and Biba Gaginau in writing a very personal recipe cum travelogue cum memoir volume focusing on her personal experiences with food in Italy. All three of these ladies are superb writers on their subject, so one may expect comparable quality from all three, but that is not the case. At the very least, Ms. Willinger's volume will have a somewhat smaller audience for two reasons. First, her memoir and travelogue content is much higher than with Madame Biba and Madame Lydia. This has a lot to offer for those who wish to do a culinary tour of Italy. I've personally experienced some culinary disasters even in Miss Faith's very own adopted home town of Florence, where I had a meal at a family run Trattoria which was simply horrible. Not every door to a culinary establishment in Italy will lead to pleasantly memorable food. Willinger spends much ink on describing her culinary friends from whom she acquired these recipes. Second, unlike Biba and Lydia, Willinger's choice of recipes is highly idiosyncratic. The two other ladies both limit themselves to selected cities and regions in Italy, but within those regions, they tend to select a set of recipes which are highly representative of the regions. In the case of Bastianich, this is especially interesting since most of her regions are on the borders of Italy, where the cuisine is heavily influenced by Austria, France, and North Africa. These two considerations are no reflection on this book's quality, but only on the people to whom it will most appeal, which is simply not everyone in the market for a good Italian cookbook. There are two other aspects of the book which seriously tell against the book's quality in general. First, there are outright mistakes. The very first recipe in the book for `gnocco fritto' cites active dry yeast as an ingredient and gives instructions for blooming the yeast, but then, the yeast is never added to the flour, and the dough is made sans leavening! Second, the recipe descriptions have a high degree of variability in the level of detail. Many things about which most cookbook writers are compulsively exact, Ms. Willinger leaves to our judgment, such as the size of eggs to use. For relatively experienced cooks, this is no bother. Anyone who has enjoyed the epigrammatic recipes in Elizabeth David's `A Book of Mediterranean Food' will have no problem with these, but people who like every detail specified may find some bits of information left to the judgment of the reader. It is very important to say that this book is still very valuable to dedicated foodies of the Italian flavor. By being very personal, it gives a wealth of recipes which one will not find in the standard manuals. And, one