La Terra Fortunata: The Splendid Food and Wine of Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Italy's Great Undiscovered Region

Informative book with great recipes and lots of interesting facts about this region of Italy.

`La Terra Fortunata' on the culinary landscape of Friuli-Venezia Giulia by noted writer on Italian food, Fred Plotkin belongs to the ranks of many outstanding books on regional Italian cooking such as `The Splendid Table' by Lynne Rossetto Kaspar, `Naples at Table' by Arthur Schwartz, and `Cooking the Roman Way' by David Downie. Not only does Plotkin give us a superb picture of the cuisine of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, he convinces me that this region easily ranks with Kaspar's Emilia-Romagna as one of the two or three foremost culinary centers in Italy. There are at least three culinary reasons why this region is interesting. First, it is one of Italy's leading wine-producing regions, with a greater variety of grapes than any other part of this great wine country. Second, it ranks just behind Emilia-Romagna as one of the world's great producers of cured hams, with the procuitto San Daniele equal in quality to that of the more famous Parma hams. Third, it is literally at the crossroads of the Latin, Germanic, and Slavic culinary worlds, as it was once the primary port of the great Austro-Hungarian empire and it's dishes and ingredients show almost as much Germanic and Slavic influence as it does Italian. One symptom of this multicultural influence is the large number of different recipes there are for gnocchi. While Rome is famous for the potato gnocchi, generally served in Trattoria on Thursdays, Friuli-Venezia Giulia gives us at least eight (8) different gnocchi recipes, some different by only the sauce, but some with different ingredients such as squash, ricotta, and plums. This makes total sense when you consider that gnocchi is halfway between Italian soft pasta and the dumplings and spaetzle of the Austro-Hungarian world. While I have seen recipes for gnocchi with squash and ricotta in other books, this is a first with plums. Although this leads to another highlighted difference from the rest of Italy. In no other region of Italy do I see as many savory recipes with fruits, especially apples, pears, and figs, combined with the `cookie spices' as I do in this book on Friuli-Venezia Giulia. While Sicily is famous for using `cookie spices' due to the North African influence, Trieste and the rest of Friuli-Venezia Giulia was actually as close or closer in contact with Moslem culinary influences when Trieste sat just on the border between Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman empire. A major symptom of Friuli-Venezia Giulia's cosmopolitan culinary heritage is the fact that olive oil, butter, and pork fat all seem to be used in about the same quantity. There is no strong inclination to use one of the three as there is in southern Italy, Spain, Provence, (olive oil) or northern Europe (butter). Of all the treatises I have read on Italian regional cooking, this seems to have the best evocation of the region's history and how that history influenced the people, the food, and the wine of the region. While Arthur Schwartz' `Naples at Table' gives a good pic

Why so many cookbooks these days? One reason is that anyone can troll the Internet for a few hours and download enough recipes to make a book with very little effort; some "authors" apparently do just that. Not, however, Fred Plotkin, who has produced here not a book but a feast that demands the attention of any serious cook or food-lover.Fred Plotkin's field is Italy--all Italy (as in "Italy for the Gourmet Traveler," which you should order) and the obscure and less-known regions of Italy, as in this book, which is centered on Friuli-Venezia Giulia, high in the northeast, and in his previous one on Liguria (order that too, while you're at it), the superb "Recipes from Paradise: Life and Food on the Italian Riviera (order that, too). These regions--their very existence--will come as a surprise to many Americans, who have been led by decades of relentless and superficial media coverage to believe that Italy is Tuscany and that Tuscany is only the area between Florence and Siena.Plotkin doesn't strip-mine a region and bung a lot of recipes into a book. He explores and absorbs it. He visits Italy frequently and has often lived there for extended periods, sharing the life of regions that call out to him. In this case, he writes--elegantly, feelingly--of a region he has known for more than 25 years. For this reason, people and places come alive as welcoming presences.Recipes? There are recipes galore here, and you will be happy (I hope) to know that that are not the tired (and overhyped) Tuscan retreads. With its Adriatic coast, this region was deeply involved in the Spice Trade at its height, and so you will find many spices used here, some of which (cumin, for example) will come as a surprise.I recommend this book for cold winter days. It'll warm you just to read it, and then you can start cooking too.Bill Marsano is a James Beard Award-winning writer on wine, spirits and food.

Fred Plotkin knows Italy, food, unusual combinations -- everything-- especially in this absolutely wonderful book on the Friuli region. Sauerkraut soup infused with smoked pork, panchetta, spices, filled with cranberry beans ( or whatever your favorite choice is), gnocchi filled with butternut squash, veal shin--the meat sooo tender, zucchini seasoned with cinnamon (how fabulous). So many recipes, so little time to make them all but you will. And you will learn much about this region, unlike any other in Italy and using many herbs and spices you would not expect. This is a wonderful homage to Lidia Bastianich who grew up in that area and while her two books on Friuli are incomparable and filled with great recipes, this one will finish the meal beautifully.