La Cucina Siciliana Di Gangivecchio/Gangivecchio's Sicilian Kitchen: Recipes from Gangivecchio's Sicilian Kitchen

I purchased this book quite a few years back when I lived in Texas. The recipes are not the typical mainstream Italian fare that shows up on restaurant menus. The food is amazing, many of the recipes just requiring a few simple ingredients and there are many stories about the local countryside, the abbey and the recipes. It is one of my all time favorite cookbooks. Easy directions to follow and you will love the arancine recipes, saffron risotto, Wanda's Involtini and the fabulous immense meatballs with ham, veal, pork, mortadella and cheese. Truly a book every kitchen should have.

I bought this book over a year ago, and still there are many recipes I want to try. Every time I look through the book something here or there will call my attention. Most recipes can be made with commonly found ingredients. Any cook should recognize the love for a constantly inspiring book --the best advertisement is just to list some recipes I've tried: roasted pepper and cream sauce with penne, risotto milanese that can be modified with your favorite vegetable, risotto with pumpkin and walnuts, risotto with spinach and pecorino, baked stuffed swordfish rolls, baked stuffed zucchini, and sweet and sour pumpkin. There are lots of diverse, fantastic sounding recipes in the book, but I haven't tried them for lack of time. But all of the recipes I've listed can be made in under 1 hr with prep time included. My risotto wasn't great before, now it's fool proof. I would recommend this for someone that knows how to cook and can draw on this book for their own recipes.

If you like to cook and you want authentic Southern Italian cooking (compared to the Tuscany inspired cooking that has been all the rage), then this is absolutely the best cookbook you can buy...with the possible exception of the Tornabene's new cookbook,which I am just about to buy. The recipes are pretty easy to follow, but most require either a fair amount of prep or some time to stir the pot. The pasta dishes are fantastic. My family loves the fava bean recipes (I cooked one as a joke in honor of Silence of the Lambs, but it was a hit, so I've been making them ever since) and the anchovy tomato sauce. I love this cookbook so much that I actually made the trip to the restaurant. It's not a place you get to by accident, you really have to want to go because it is way way out in the middle of Sicily. But the food there is excellent, and I was lucky enough to eat things familiar to me from the cookbook, as well as some new dishes. I'm not sure I'll ever try any of the desserts in this cookbook (too much work) but I've eaten some of them at their restaurant - and I can recommend them highly!P.S. If you decide to make the trek, I recommend that you stay at their hotel. The grounds of Gangivechio are lovely and worth enjoying on their own.

This is one of my most frequently used cookbooks (and I have a lot of them) just for the pasta section. The recipes are simple enough to use for everyday, and good enough to use for company. The ditali with spinach, the rigatoni daniela, the arugula and fresh tomato sauces, the zucchini pasta sauce---all are easy, draw raves from guests, require no special ingredients, and taste like the wonderful pastas I had in trattorias in Sicily. The risotto recipe is the best I've ever used; the salads are also good; the desserts and main dishes are mostly too complicated for daily use, or for any but the experienced cook.

This book is as enjoyable to read as it is to cook from. The stories from this world class restaurant alone are enough to keep you turning the pages in anticipation. The recipes are easy to follow and at the same time hard to screw up. I have found that almost every one of them can be subject to artistic liberty and still turn out magnificent. Gangivecchio is ahead of Saint Peters Basillica on my list of things to do the next time I am in the Mediterranean. I'm quite sure the Cannoli alone are worth the air fare.