Grab this book and your forchetta (fork) and head to Italy for a tantalizing tour of tastes. Faith Heller Willinger is an American living in Italy who has devoted her taste buds to sampling and reporting on the best Italian kitchens have to offer. If you think Italian food equals pizza and spaghetti, the variety of offerings found in the 11 northern regions explored in this book will astound you. Each regional section begins with helpful explanations of Italian dishes from local menus. Next, the wine and food specialties are temptingly presented with interesting tidbits about production methods and historical origins. For example, grissini, yard-long breadsticks of the Piemonte region, were first made in 1668, when "the Savoia court doctor, Don Baldo Pecchio, had the court baker whip up some crunchy, thin and easily digestible breadsticks for the sickly Prince Vittorio Amadeo II, who suffered from 'intestinal fevers.'" Each section is finished off with a listing of restaurants and inns, organized by city. If you aren't sated yet, Eating in Italy also provides gelato flavors, a key to Italian opening and closing hours, types of pasta, wine terminology, and a food glossary.


From Library Journal
Willinger, an American who lives in Italy, celebrates some of the world's best food in this gastronomic tour of the 11 regions that make up northern Italy. For each region, she begins with a pithy explanation of the best local dishes and food specialties, and the best regional wines and their producers. Then, listed by city or town, she recommends hotels and inns, restaurants of many types and sizes, and all kinds of markets and shops that sell food, wine, and housewares. Major cities get major attention, but this book is perhaps most valuable for its tips about dozens of smaller places, many of them well off the usual tourist beat. A gem of a travel guide, highly recommended.- Ruth Diebold, M.L.S., Upper Nyack, N.Y.Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
Faith Heller Willinger has the unique advantage of being an American with an insider's knowledge of the culinary mysteries of Italy and a profound love for all of them. Drawn from her extensive knowledge and expertise Eating in Italy is a gastronomic tour of the regions that comprise the northern half of the country. The finest restaurants in Florence, the best chocolate anywhere, the chic kitchenware shops in Milan, outdoor markets in towns not on any tourist's map, elegant and affordable hotels in Venice, picnic spots in the countryside -- there's information for every traveler, armchair or otherwise, who wants to experience the authentic flavor of northern Italy. Here is the Italian table for the adventurous and sophisticated, including every food-related situation, ritual, and tradition, from weather to waiters, climate to Chianti.


About the Author
Faith Heller Willinger is a contributing editor for Gourmet magazine and Epicurious, the Conde Nast Internet food site.She also runs a personalized travel service.She lives in Florence, Italy.

FROM OUR EDITORS

A Cooking Class with Faith Heller Willinger

Faith Heller Willinger arrived at New York cooking school De Gustibus at Macy's sporting a colorful Moschino scarf with a map of Italy decorated with cartoony illustrations of its famous buildings and foodstuffs and the label "a fancy map of the most beautiful country in the world." Listening to her stories of the people, the places, and especially the food that she encounters in her daily life there, that's an easy boast to believe. Whether she's on the trail of the artisans who make the most incredible aged aceto balsamico, taking a class of cooking students to a farm on an island in the Venetian lagoon to search out the first crop of special spring artichokes and just-picked asparagus, or just sitting down to work at the computer that's not far from the open hearth in her kitchen in Tuscany, Willinger's passion for the history and traditions of her adopted country's cuisine is clear. That passion, tempered with a dry wit, animated her as she shared her knowledge and her favorite recipes for primi, or appetizers, with an avid audience. Willinger was assisted by Vincent Scotto, her good friend and a well-known New York chef, formerly of Fresco.

About Faith Heller Willinger, Eating in Italy, and Red, White & Greens

Willinger has made her home in Italy for 25 years, and, as she writes in the newly revised and updated edition of her definitive traveler's guide Eating in Italy, learning about the country's regional cooking as an American who fell in love with Italy as an adult was in some ways an advantage. She's been able to grasp the nature of the foods and wines of each area "unencumbered by the roots that in some cases bind Italians to their own regional traditions to the exclusion of all others—and in others stir a rebellion against anything local." Over those 25 years she has become as much an insider as any Italian, and her authoritative knowledge of the cooking, the products, and the culinary history of the country is unequaled among American food writers. She shares the riches of that knowledge both in Eating in Italy and in her wonderful vegetable cookbook Red, White and Greens: The Italian Way With Vegetables.. In Eating in Italy, Willinger covers 11 regions of northern Italy in depth, providing information on what's eaten where and when and with what wine, regional specialties and when you'll find them, insider's tips, and the details on dozens of restaurants, hotels, shops, and fairs where the best in Italian food and products can be found. Unlike in most travel books, Willinger's personality and her forceful opinions come through—delightfully—on every page of Eating in Italy. The same is true of Red, White and Greens: The Italian Way With Vegetables. Along with authentic, simple recipes that depend on finding the best ingredients possible, Willinger describes the history and lore of each vegetable she covers.

About the Menu

Willinger started off the class by passing around chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano ("the greatest cheese in the world") drizzled with authentic, aged aceto balsamico (balsamic vinegar)—at least 25 years old, produced in Emilia Romagna, and available in trademark bottles shaped like a spherical laboratory flask with a square base. One hundred grams of this elixir costs about $80 in Italy, and even more in the U.S., but it is so potent that one uses very little and a bottle can last for years. The taste of the dark and syrupy liquid is almost impossible to describe—sweet, sour, aromatic, and earthy all at once. "It's one of my favorite dishes in the world," Willinger said. "No time, lots of money."

The simple perfection of this item was naturally going to be hard to top, but each of Willinger's dishes held to the same philosophy—impeccable ingredients, combined with a minimum of fuss. These are simple recipes, wholly appropriate for the home cook—most take very little time to prepare but yield impressive results. Next came an unctuous pesto spread on garlicky toast, made with long leaves of Tuscan kale (similar to ordinary kale but with a more delicate texture and a veiny pattern that makes them look like reptile skin), blanched and blended with garlic and excellent olive oil. Then came a special dish Willinger created in honor of the Academy Awards, which took place on the night of her class: "Titanic" consisted of more of the pesto, swirled into the water in which the kale was blanched and the cauliflower for the sformato was cooked, and used as the basis for a soup. On this kale broth was floated a "raft" of toasted, garlic-rubbed bread, which was scattered with several shrimp, some on, some off the raft. Bravo! All three primi were complemented by the round, rich, nicely acidic taste of the Bollini "Barricato 40" Chardonnay we were served.

The next treat was perfectly cooked pasta, a short, twisty shape called strozzapreti ("priest-stranglers"), combined with simple, classic tomato sauce. Willinger loves this shape for cooking large amounts of pasta, since a hollow shape like penne takes up much more space when cooked and can be hard to handle. For Willinger's tips on how to make this dish (and any other simple pasta) as sublime as her own, see below. Our chardonnay was replaced at this point with the complex but eminently drinkable Nozzole Chianti Classico Riserva. The pasta was followed by firm and flavorful shrimp, blanched and set atop long-cooked, tender, creamy white beans. Drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with chopped basil, the dish was utterly simple and incredibly delicious. Last came the ethereal and wonderful cauliflower sformato, a pur￯﾿ﾽe of cauliflower combined with sheep's milk ricotta, garlic, herbs, and Parmigiano that is baked in a water bath, unmolded, and sliced. For dessert: frothy and delicate zabaione, made with flowery, sweet, slightly sparkling Moscato d'Asti wine and served with tart blackberries and thin almond cookies.

Tips from Faith Willinger Always use the best olive oil you can afford. "I only use fantastic oil, for the simple reason that it's the backbone of every single dish we're doing. We don't want to use an oil that's no good in the kitchen and then put the good stuff on the table when it's too late," Willinger says. Look for Italian extra-virgin oil in a dark bottle ("light is the enemy of olive oil") and store it in a cool, dark place. If you can find it, the words "produced and bottled" are a good sign, meaning the olives for the oil were grown by the producer, not imported from different regions of the country or even from Spain, Portugal, or other countries. And if the bottle is dated, look for the most recent.

For perfect pasta, first buy the best Italian handmade pasta. Willinger's favorite brand is called Latini, and it has a visibly rough surface that's a characteristic of hand-extrusion from bronze dies. The rough surface helps sauce cling better. You can also see powdery starch on the surface of the dry pasta—this starch yields pasta cooking water that when added to sauce gives it a distinctive creamy quality. To cook the pasta like Italian chefs do, Willinger says the key is to drain the pasta while it's still very al dente, and add it to the hot sauce in a saut￯﾿ﾽ pan nearby. "Then you cook the pasta and sauce together for a few minutes, adding a bit of the starchy pasta water... you'll have a bit more leeway in getting the texture of the pasta exactly right, it stays hot until you get it to the table, and the flavors all blend together," she says.

Willinger departed from her focus on authentic Italian food to give the class a clever "bonus tip"—a way to achieve the taste and luxurious texture of homemade mayonnaise without the risk of using raw egg yolks. The secret ingredient? Hellman's mayonnaise. Willinger whisks in a good dose of great olive oil, about half again the amount of mayonnaise, until emulsified. This yields an absolutely delicious, light green, heady substance that bears little resemblance to the bottled original.
—Kate Murphy

FROM THE PUBLISHER