Prosciutto, Pancetta, Salame

After you make the salami, this is how to eat it. Great meal ideas, nicely presented

Beautifully produced and informative, and just as lovingly executed as a perfect slice of prosciutto on a thick slice of rye with havarti and a little onion, tomato or sweet pepper. Nice recipes, but more. This is a gorgeous book for anyone who appreciates excellent, cured meats. Here in the U.S., people tend to think "more is better" even if it is dog food on a piece of cardboard. But, not all of us scarf down junk food all of the time; a good prosciutto is food with a simple elegance and this colorful collection captures it perfectly. My grandfather was butcher; he smoked sausages and gave them out at the holidays to neighbors and friends. I was lucky enough to see it, taste it, learn some of it and understand the slow process of curing. It is gratifying to see PROSCIUTTO as perfectly done as it is: a wonderful memory of how well foods should be done, but in America, are often overlooked. So, when I visit the local supermarket's deli, I appreciate a smile from the nice Italian lady who knows what a little prosciutto can bring: it's a little class in a pasteurized, prefab society. You won't read PROSCIUTTO as much as absorb it. Well done! Mark Braun, Associate Publisher Food Industry News

Pamela Sheldon Johns' "Prosciutto Pancetta Salame: Cooking with the Cured Meats of Italy" is a fascinating book. It starts off with a fair amount of information that explains the intricate differences between the various kinds of cured meats of Italy. It even explains the various little regional differences, and interjects stories of specific families and villages in Italy that produce particular varieties of a product. There were only a few things about this book that didn't impress me, so I'll get them out of the way first. One or two of the recipes didn't seem to have entirely well-balanced flavors, but that can be a matter of taste. A soup that uses dried chickpeas states that you can substitute with canned, but doesn't say how much you should use if you want to do that. Some recipes state amounts by weight and others by number of slices, which can make purchasing a little more difficult if you're purchasing for multiple recipes at once ("hmm... I need 5 ounces plus 8 slices of prosciutto"). We did try one recipe where we were pretty well convinced that the author wrote ounces but must have meant slices. These are small details, which is why I only docked a point for them, but they are details that make a cookbook more difficult to use. That said, there is some wonderful material in this cookbook! In addition to all of the fascinating information, some of these recipes are just incredible. The aforementioned peas with prosciutto are quite good. There's a ciabatta sandwich with salame, artichokes and rosemary that's just out of this world. The same with a soup made with chickpeas, pasta and rosemary--neither chickpeas nor rosemary inherently delight me, but I just love that soup. The combination of flavors is absolutely fantastic. Not every recipe comes with a photo, but many of them do, and the photos are quite lovely--they'll certainly make you hungry! Most of the recipes are fairly simple, meant to showcase the delicious flavors of these products rather than cover them up. Only a few require any real time or effort, and that's comparatively speaking. In all I'm quite pleased with this cookbook. It contains some imperfections, but it's quite usable and produces delicious treats that make the most of Italy's delightful cured meats.