Everyday Italian Cookbooks

As with Mexican Cuisine there is a literal avalanche of Italian Cookbooks. And as with Mexican food you have to define what you mean.

What we are are basically talking about is Italian American Food which is based on Southern Italian cooking but largely unique to this country because the first generation of immigrants had to work with what was ready available here and cheap. Hence the dominant position of the tomato in all its glories.

So to get even more specific, we are talking Italian American tomato and pasta based cooking. Moreover, some of those dishes have become American Comfort food staples. I speak here of lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs and, of course, pizza. The key ingredients are simple and yet elusive. For example, pizza dough is essentially flour and water, yet, no two pizza’s are alike.

It is true that San Marzano tomatoes are the best and you will find them referenced over and over again in the recommended cookbooks below. If you can afford them, use them.

My advice would be to save the San Marzano for a small batch dish or one where the tomato is the star. That would not be in everyday red pasta sauce. Other ingredients like, say, clams, will give your tomato sauce the rich taste it needs. So spend the extra money on those ingredients and look up some, or all of these books:

1) Everyday Italian by Giada de Laurentis: I suppose the surprise factor with Giada has worn off. She is model beautiful and thin so I believe the original impression of her was she can’t possibly know anything about cooking. Well she does. This book and its follow-up, Everyday Pasta, are genuine must owns. The staples are all here but she goes way beyond them. Even better, she emphasizes speed and ease.

Some recipes call for semi-special ingredients like fig jam or aged balsamic. They are worth stocking. On the other hand, dried herbs can sub for fresh and the ratio is half the amount dried for fresh. Which reminds me: Herb Pork Roast with Fig Jam Sauce, a wow weekday dinner. Yes, weekday. Read it and see.

2) Rocco’s Italian American by Rocco DiSpirito: When you entered my grandmothers Queens apartment, you could see the stove from the doorway. And there she was over the stove stirring the tomato sauce. It’s sweet aroma perfumed the entire apartment. You got your kiss and your cheek pinched, sharply.

There were words exchanged but I only spoke English and she only spoke Italian. So if she was done at the stove, we went our separate ways, she to talk to my father and uncle and me to play on the fire escape, which usually entailed climbing down to the small, mostly concrete yard that belonged to my grandmother’s landlord, which happened to be my Aunt.

The sauce recipe here is my Grandmother’s. A little thinner perhaps but the taste is unmistakable. Her sauce, unlike the book’s, was also a meat sauce meaning it was loaded with spicy meatballs, sweet fatty pork sausage and braciole. And it only took me 50 years to track down that taste! The one and only reason this book is included here but that is good enough for me.

3) The Four Seasons Of Pasta by Barilla: So this is the book that got me started cooking from Cookbooks. Prior to this, it was guess work or whatever the box it came in said. And speaking of boxes, it was a mail in offer from a box of Barilla pasta that got me this booklet for something like $3 over 20 years ago.

Not only do I still have this small, staple backed softcover, but I still cook from it. The pasta dishes — and they are all pasta dishes — are more weighted toward vegetables then meat. Moreover, not many are tomato sauce based.

That said, this book contains my “go-to” vodka sauce recipe which I have been making for friends and family for decades now. It is quick and easy and an elegant change up if that is your dining mood.

4) Celebrate The Mediterranean Menu by Bertolli: Again, this was a mail-in booklet but, I checked and it is available from Amazon and other online sources. Also, like Barilla, the recipes here are mostly vegetable based and without tomato sauce. Best of all they are fast for weekdays.

Try the Roasted Carrots with Lemon and Olives or the deconstructed Walnut Pesto or the Wilted Greens and Pine Nuts with Raisins. Then there is dessert: Ricotta Pie — which is basically a simplified version of Italian cheesecake — and the Chocolate Torta. Both are still my go-to sweets because they are quick and elegant.

5) Carmine’s Family Style Cookbook by Michael Ronis: I used to love the very rare occasions we went out to eat at an Italian Restaurant. You may find that odd since I came from an Italian background but my Mom was mostly not Italian and struggled with the Cuisine.

So for good Southern Italian food it was Grandma’s or one of several places my dad liked, of which the only survivors is Ralph’s in Philadelphia and Vincent’s in Little Italy. Go to those by the way.

My point here is that this book is Easy Coast Italian restaurant food and it is the best of it from the baked clams to the chicken parmigiana to the pasta with sausage and broccoli. Why is it the best? Because it is by design.

There is no Carmine. A group of restaurant entrepreneurs and investors did some research in New York City and came up with the stereotypical Little Italy, South Philly, Brooklyn Italian restaurant menu. And it stands to reason, they would only choose the best ideas and the biggest sellers.

And if you like Carmine’s, you will like this book and you may not need the others if that is as far as you go with Italian food and I can’t knock you for that. It is mostly what I eat on a regular basis when I choose Italian. I wish I could gift you the two paperbacks because they go beyond the standard famous fare. Giada comes close so maybe try that one. Whatever you do, try and then enjoy!