In a Roman Kitchen: Timeless Recipes from the Eternal City

If you have been to Roma and loved the food, then buy this book. Reading this book and looking at its pictures is just like being transported back to the Eternal City. If you are looking to expand your collection of authentic Italian cookbooks this book will make an excellent addition to your collection. The directions are well written and easy to follow. The Tuna fish pate recipe reminded me of a dish I had in Trastevere (Jewish section of Roma) and was quick and easy to make in my home. There is an entire section dedicated to Fritto Misto (Mixed Fry), which you know Romans love if you have been fortunate enough to spend time in Roma. These recipes are always appreciated in my home. If you want to try a dish that will blow your mind (and your cardiologist's), the pasta with Gorgonzola and Mascarpone is unbelievable. How can 5 ingredients taste so sublime? Leave it to the Italians. I also love the little tidbits of information that the author passing along about shopping in Roma. I highly recommend this book to anyone that loves Roma, or wants to.

Two books on Roman cooking have appeared within the last eighteen (18) months, which gives us a golden opportunity to proof one against the other to find the better book. The first published last year is , `Cooking the Roman Way' by David Downie. The second, more recently published book is the current subject `In a Roman Kitchen: Timeless Recipes from the Eternal City' by Jo Bettoja.In general, Downie's book appears to be based more on restaurante, trattoria, and osteria recipes while Bettoja seems to rely more on home cooking recipes. Still, there is a significant overlap of recipe names. I had no trouble at all finding five recipes with the same traditional Italian name, although the English translation of the name may have been a little different. I give high marks to both authors for giving the Italian names of all dishes in both the text and the index.I compared the recipes for five dishes:Gnocchi di Semolino alla RomanaSpaghetti alla CarbonaraCipolline in Agrodolce alla RomanaCarciofi alla GiudiaFrittata con ZucchiniAlthough no pair of recipes was the same, I can find virtually nothing in these five recipes which would suggest that one author was presenting consistently superior recipes. I was slightly annoyed with Downie for specifying white coctail onions in the Cipolline recipe, especially since I have no trouble finding cipolline in my local Pennsylvania megamart. My conclusion that Downie relies on the Trattoria and Bettoja relies on the home is in the sources they cite for their recipes. Both appear to give equal time to the influence of the Jewish quarter on Roman cooking.In Bettoja's case, the focus seems to be on a large number of recipes for each major type of Roman dish. She has, for example, more pasta, artichoke, and fava bean recipes than Downie, and also more dessert recipes. This is ironic since Downie controverts one of my hero Mario Batali's claims that Italians do not go in for sweets.In contrast, Downie includes many seminally Roman recipes which Bettoja simply ignores. He has excellent recipes for making both Pizza Bianco, a certifiable Roman speciality, and fresh fettucini, including sound recommendations on making the fettucini completely by hand and with the assistance of power mixers and power pasta rolling machines. Most surprising of all is that Downie includes the recipe for Gnocchi di Patate while Bettoja does not. My understanding from Mario is that this is a Roman speciality and every trattoria in Rome serves it on Thursday. Alternately, Claudia Roden identifies it as a northern (Friuli) Italian speciality. Since Downie specifically cites potato gnocchi as the Roman canonical dish for Thursday and thereby agrees with Mario, I have to assume that while the dish may be promenant outside Rome, it is certainly a distinctively Roman dish as well.Bettoja is a teacher who runs her own culinary school in Rome while Downie is a culinary journalist, so it surprises me that it is Downie who has the superior sidebars on s

Last spring, I passed a pleasant hour conversing with Jo Bettoja in her gracious Roman apartment near the Trevi Fountain.This spring, I've passed many pleasant hours visiting again with Jo Bettoja - this time in the pages of her inviting new book "In a Roman Kitchen: Timeless Recipes from the Eternal City." Bettoja is an American from Millen, Georgia, a small town near Savannah. As a young woman, she traveled to Rome on a modeling assignment. She fell in love with the city and also with Angelo Bettoja, to whom she has been married for nearly 50 years. The couple have three grown children. Having lived the better part of her long and colorful life in Rome, I believe it's safe to say that Jo Bettoja is Italian. Just as a religious convert is sometimes more zealous than someone born to the faith, Bettoja spreads the gospel of genuine cucina alla Romana with unparalleled passion.It seems wherever she has tread for the past half century on the ancient stones of the city, recipes and food lore present themselves to her. Bettoja credits her initial training in Italian cooking to her husband. Then, in the 1970s, with Anna Maria Cornetto, she launched the fashionable cooking school Lo Scaldavivande. She has also written several cookbooks and published magazine articles."In a Roman Kitchen" is touchingly personal - like a collection of recipes and memories a mother would pass on to a daughter. These days, Bettoja still scours the street markets for the finest seasonal produce and other ingredients. She tells us of puntarelle, sliced chickory stems only available for a short time in spring, and the renowned carciofi alla Giudia, Fried Artichokes The Jewish Way. She culls dishes of noble pedigree, such as Chicken Breasts for the Princess from her friend Signor Ettore Nibbi who started his culinary career as a kitchen boy in a Roman palace. At the other end of the social scale, she transcribes recipes from a taxi driver including one for delightful Baked Stuffed Chicken Breasts (recipe follows). She cajoles her friends into sharing tempting home-style recipes such as Mina's Meat Loaf and Ginetta's Party Pasta. She escorts us to her bakery Riposati that faces the Trevi Fountain. "They sell a little bit of everything, but they have kept their ovens and still make their bread, only once a day now, but still of fine quality," Bettoja writes. "During Carnival they make the traditional sweets, frappe and castagnole, which are particularly good, and small simple pastries all year long. They have small and large rolls of all kinds, Terni loaves, bread with and without salt, squares of 'white' pizza painted with olive oil and sprinkled with kosher salt, 'red' pizza with tomato sauce on top, rough white country bread, Arab bread, brown coarse loaves, and so on." Bettoja is a sorceress of succulence. Leafing through the recipes for Bucatini all'Amatriciana (long hollow pasta in tomato sauce with bacon and hot pepper), Calamari alla Romana (squid in spicy wine sauce), Co

I visit Rome once a year, and in between times I dream of it. Of course, sitting in a Roman trattoria enjoying a fritto misto Romano , perhaps with artichokes, zucchini, or salt cod, tasting the wintery greens such as puntarelle, and hazlenut desserts, makes up part of that dream. Now Jo Bettoja has made the dream a savory reality, allowing me to create some of those joys here in New York, while imagining the sun set over St Peter's of course. Even a non-meat eater like myself can find dozens of pleasures in this treasure of a book.

I just returned home from a week in Rome with my husband. It was our first trip there and we just fell in love with the city, its people and of course, the food! I decided I would surprise my husband with some authentic recipes and bought Jo Bettoja's book. So far, I've made the Saltimbocca and the Artichoke Pie that were both fantastic! We topped the meal off with a delicious tea cake. The photos she uses throughout the book and her personal anecdotets on Rome are charming. I recommend this book to everyone!