Читать книгу Italian Recipes For Dummies - Amy Riolo - Страница 9

You don’t need to live in Italy to create great Italian food. You do, however, need to understand Italian meal patterns, some history and culture, and why foods are eaten and paired in a specific way. You’re in luck! Italian Recipes For Dummies provides not only the recipes needed to make authentic dishes, but also many of the often unexplained strategies that housewives and restaurant chefs have employed and passed down for years. These strategies make even the most labor-intensive Italian recipes accessible for home cooks everywhere, and this book reveals them.

I understand that some days are busier than others, so this book outlines how to fit cooking into your life. Most importantly, though, it discusses the deep-rooted misconceptions about getting to cook (not just having to cook) that have deprived us of one of life’s greatest pleasures. You learn why Italians, myself included, are so passionate about food, and you may be inspired to adopt some of the fervor! Whatever your cooking skill level, you will find recipes and tips that are perfect for you.

This book is a reference, which means you don’t have to read it from beginning to end or commit it to memory. Instead, you can dip in and out of the book to find the information you need. Use the table of contents and the index to find the subjects you’re looking for. If you’re short on time, you can skip sidebars (text in gray boxes) and anything marked with the Technical Stuff icon.

When it comes to the recipes, keep in mind the following:

 All temperatures are Fahrenheit. For conversion to Celsius, see the Appendix.

 Vegetarian recipes are marked with the tomato icon () in the Recipes in This Chapter and Recipes in This Book lists.

 I call for high quality extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) and unrefined sea salt in many recipes throughout this book. I recommend these varieties because there is a big difference among the types on the market today, and using the best quality ingredients ensures that they are better for you. Be sure to check out Chapter 5 for more info about why these items are important to me and, I feel, to Italian cooking.

 If your budget allows, use organic ingredients whenever possible. But no matter what, buy the best-quality ingredients you can, from as close to where you live as possible — and enjoy them to the fullest.

 In this book, my dear friend, Dr. Sante Laviola, Italian research scientist, Sommelier, and official wine-taster of the Slow Wine Guide (published by Slow Food Editore) has paired his wine suggestions with my recipes. I truly appreciate his opinions because he has a very unique and highly informed perspective on wine pairing. With a PhD in Physics of the Earth System, Dr. Laviola uses a distinct form of wine pairing that promotes natural wines and protects our environment while pairing wines with the proper terroir (or natural environment including soil, topography, and climate) to each plate. He uses a geo-sensory wine-tasting approach when pairing; instead of smelling a wine’s aroma, he tastes it and senses the tactile properties in order to pair it with the territory, which is an increasingly popular method of evaluating natural wines.Of course, the wine pairings in this book are mere suggestions. You may opt to not drink with your meals, to pair your own favorite wines, or use different pairing parameters. Note that Dr. Laviola has shared the properties and characteristics of the wines he’s paired with the recipes to make it easier to find a suitable substitute if needed.

Finally, within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you have it easy—just click the web address to be taken directly to the webpage.