Warm and calmly authoritative, Lidia Bastianich has won the trust of many cooks, who also devour her TV shows and books including Lidia's Italian Table and Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen. Lidia's Family Table also presents homey Italian fare--savory dishes like Cauliflower Soup with Poached Garlic Purée; Potato, Leek, and Bacon Ravioli; Skillet Green Beans with Gorgonzola; and Grilled Tuna Rollatini Under Tomato-Lemon Marinade--over 200 recipes in all. But Family Table is equally about technique; readers will find it crammed with instructive asides like "Using 'Pasta Water' to Make a Quick Sauce" (the water's starchiness can add body to sauces) and "Reduced Wine Vinegar for Vegetables" (heat-concentrated vinegar makes a deliciously mellow seasoning).

But the teaching doesn't stop there. Bastianich's discussions of risotto and polenta are particularly good (when preparing risotto, for example, the liquid must simmer for the dish to become properly toothsome), while a section on quick skillet sauces, like one made with sausage, onions, and fennel, will get many readers to the kitchen pronto. Bastianich also offers advice for preparing lesser-known yet attractive meat cuts like shoulder and butt, as well as quick-take recipes for the likes of whole corn cooked in tomato sauce and eggplant with scrambled eggs. The Bastianich approach also applies to the dessert section, which offers simple fruit-based sweets like Fig Focaccia, and Crostata with Poached Apricots and Pignolala. (Included, too, are a number of simple strudel recipes, a bow to the cooking of Istria, Bastianich's birthplace.) Color photos make succinct technical points as well as showing Lidia's extended family at table and very much in action. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Fans will appreciate this companion book to Bastianich's latest PBS series of the same name (after Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen), and it may win her some new admirers as well. It presents the food Bastianich prepares at home for her large family (which includes children, grandchildren, siblings and her 80-plus-year-old mother and her companion, who live upstairs), but it's also proof that home cooking need not be oversimplified, with plenty of projects for those who relish a challenge. There are also many photographic illustrations offering gentle guidance to readers attempting Grilled Tuna Rollatini under Tomato-Lemon Marinade, or Pasticciata Bolognese. Elegant recipes, such as Fresh Pear and Pecorino Ravioli, are sprinkled throughout, but the majority are for hearty dishes that lend themselves to serving family-style, like Zucchini and Country Bread Lasagna with day-old bread in place of pasta and Braised Beef Shoulder Roast with Venetian Spice, which incorporates cinnamon and coffee beans. As testament to both Bastianich's creativity and the endless supply of good food from Italy, there are authentic, unusual treasures here, like Riso Sartù, which packs risotto into molds for individual towers. Bastianich is also generous with clever tips and brainstorms: Why not use poached garlic purée for those with delicate digestion, or poach corn on the cob in tomato sauce? The range is impressive, the flavors strong. It's enough to make readers clamor to be adopted into the Bastianich clan. 85 color photos. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Inside Flap
The best-loved and most-admired of all America’s television cooks today, Lidia Bastianich, now gives us her most generous, instructive, and creative cookbook. The emphasis here is on cooking for the family, and her book is filled with unusually delicious basic recipes for everyday eating Italian-style, as well as imaginative ideas for variations and improvisations.

Here are more than 200 fabulous new dishes that will appeal both to Lidia’s loyal following, who have come to rely on her wonderfully detailed recipes, and to the more adventurous cook ready to experiment.

• She welcomes us to the table with tasty bites from the sea (including home-cured tuna and mackerel), seasonal salads, and vegetable surprises (Egg-Battered Zucchini Roll-Ups, Sweet Onion Gratinate).

• She reveals the secret of simple make-ahead soup bases, delicious on their own and easy to embellish for a scrumptious soup that can make a meal.

• She opens up the wonderful world of pasta, playing with different shapes, mixing and matching, and creating sauces while the pasta boils; she teaches us to make fresh egg pastas, experimenting with healthful ingredients–whole wheat, chestnut, buckwheat, and barley. And she makes us understand the subtle arts of polenta- and risotto-making as never before.

• She shares her love of vegetables, skillet-cooking some to intensify their flavor, layering some with yesterday’s bread for a lasagna-like gratin, blanketing a scallop of meat with sautéed vegetables, and finishing seasonal greens with the perfect little sauce.

• She introduces us to some lesser-known cuts of meats for main courses (shoulders, butts, and tongue) and underused, delicious fish (skate and monkfish), as well as to her family’s favorite recipes for chicken and a beautiful balsamic-glazed roast turkey.

• And she explores with us the many ways fruits and crusts (pie, strudel, cake, and toasted bread) marry and produce delectable homey desserts to end the meal.

Lidia’s warm presence is felt on every page of this book, explaining the whys and wherefores of what she is doing, and the brilliant photographs take us right into her home, showing her rolling out pasta with her grandchildren, bringing in the summer harvest, and sitting around the food-laden family table. As she makes every meal a celebration, she invites us to do the same, giving us confidence and joy in the act of cooking.

About the Author
Lidia Bastianich is the author of three previous books: La Cucina di Lidia and the best-selling Lidia’s Italian Table and Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen–also the names of her nationally syndicated public television series. She is the owner of the very successful New York City restaurant Felidia, as well as Becco, Esca, and Lidia’s in Pittsburgh and Kansas City, and she gives lectures on Italian cuisine throughout the country. She lives on Long Island in New York and she can be reached at her Web site, www.lidiasitaly.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Welcome to my kitchen. I want to give you a look around this space–the heart of my home–and at the staple foods and equipment I cook with at home.

I have a comfortable kitchen, which after thirty years in the cramped galleys of restaurants is a dream. At last I have lots of work space atop the cabinets, which sit at either end of my double-oven commercial stove. Together they form an island which stretches across one side of the kitchen. My favorite work space is at the left of the island, with the stove burners immediately to my right, an easy reach to shake a skillet. Underneath my countertop prep area are cupboards with my essential seasonings. The refrigerator and freezer are a few steps to the left. The main sink is right behind me (with a view of my fig tree through the window); next to it, there’s a hearth housing a wood-fired rotisserie and grill. From hooks and racks above the sink and hearth hang skillets, saucepans, and pot covers; sieves, spiders, tongs, ladles, and spatulas.

But the most delightful aspect of my kitchen is that the work counters and cook top are open to the eating area with the long pine table–my family table–at which we take most of our meals and do most of our living as well. When I am making supper, I can watch Tanya and Lorenzo doing art; keep an eye on Julia in her playpen and Ethan searching for cookies; see my mother picking fresh chives from the little garden bed outside the windows. Giovanni is peeling garlic for me and we’re conversing in Italian. This is the way I cook!

The Foods I Cook with at Home
Most days when I cook lunch or supper at home I don’t have time to shop, so I get my ideas by opening some of the dozens of doors in the kitchen–for the dry storage cupboards, the refrigerator, and the freezer–and seeing what’s behind them.

Let’s open some of these together, starting with the cooking staples I keep close by, in the cabinet right under my cutting boards and the cupboards on the other side of the stove island. I haven’t included every item you might find on a given day since I do collect seasonings, condiments, and regional specialties on my trips, and incorporate them into dishes when I am improvising and having fun. And you don’t need everything listed here to cook my recipes, though I have marked in bold the items that are, in my opinion, essentials to keep on hand at all times:

Basics for stovetop cooking, on and under the counter:
• Extra-virgin olive oil: good grade for cooking; premium for seasoning
• Canola oil
• Vinegars–red wine vinegar; balsamic vinegar, medium grade (see page
39); distilled white vinegar; cider vinegar
• Sea salt, both granular (table grind) and coarse crystal (sel de mer);
crystal kosher salt; premium crystal sea salt (fleur de sel)
• Whole black peppercorns, whole white peppercorns
• Peperoncino–hot red pepper flakes, for that touch of spiciness we all like
• Dried oregano (Greek); dried thyme
• All-purpose flour
• Dried bread crumbs–dried bread crumbs can stay in an air-tight container in the cupboard; if seasoned with oil or cheese keep in refrigerator

The Vegetable Bin–a dark and cool place:
• Garlic–lots!
• Shallots
• Common (yellow) onions, red onions, sweet onions (such as Maui, Walla Walla, or Vidalia)
• Russet (baking) potatoes, small red potatoes, Yukon Gold potatoes

In the cupboards:
• All-purpose flour, unbleached; whole-wheat flour; semolina flour; buckwheat flour (oily specialty flours, like chestnut and chickpea, in the freezer).
• Yellow polenta (imported); buckwheat polenta (taragna); white
polenta
• Short-grain Italian rice for risotto (Arborio or Carnaroli); long-grain
white rice; brown rice, wild rice
• Dried pastas–long: spaghetti, linguini, perciatelli, capellini; tubular: ziti, rigati, rigatoni, cavatappi, radiatori, gomiti, campanelle; and for soups: tubetini, stellinie, orzo, ancini pepe. Plus dry whole-wheat linguini or ziti, and other different shapes to enjoy as you find them
in the store.
• Dried cannellini beans; dried borlotti or cranberry beans; dried blackeye
beans
• Dried lentils
• Split peas
• Farro-barley
• Golden raisins, prunes, dried apricots, dried cherries
• Dried porcini (my mother puts them in the freezer) (see page 140)
• Pine nuts, walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts (put them in the freezer, too, for
long storage)
• Sugar, granulated; honey; zucchero da canna (page 389); maple syrup;
brown sugar (dark and light)

In the cupboards in cans and jars (I check the fridge first for open jars!):
• San Marzano plum tomatoes
• Imported tomato paste (preferably in tubes)
• Sun-dried tomatoes, packed in olive oil
• Imported tuna fish packed in olive oil (tonno in olio)
• Imported anchovies, packed in olive oil (in the freezer, if opened)
• Tiny capers (nonpareil) in vinegar brine
• Peperoncini, whole small peppers in vinegar brine, preferably Tuscan
• Hot cherry peppers in vinegar brine (for hot-lovers, like me)
• Roasted sweet red peppers* (pimento) in brine
• Canned, cooked beans: cannellini; garbanzo (ceci)
• Apricot jam, rose hip jam, plum jam, strawberry jam, peanut butter
• Baby gherkin pickles
• Dijon mustard
• Ketchup

In the refrigerator–everyday dairy and cheeses:
• Milk: whole, 2%, and skim
• Butter, unsalted (there’s salted too)
• All-the-time cheeses: Parmigiano-Reggiano, Pecorino, and Grana
Padano (cheese rinds are saved in the fridge as well)
• Some-of-the-time cheeses: fresh mozzarella, fresh ricotta, crumbly goat cheese; ricotta salata, aged pecorino

In the refrigerator–vegetables and herbs:
• Carrots, celery, scallions, leeks, spinach, cabbage, mushrooms,
lettuces, chard, parsnips, turnips, celery root, squashes
• Italian parsley, fresh basil, fresh rosemary, fresh bay leaves, fresh
thyme, fresh mint (fresh horseradish and other herbs when in season)

In the refrigerator–odds and ends:
• Bacon (preferably slab or thick-cut); prosciutto ends (see page 129)
• All kinds of olives: black and green; brine-cured, oil-cured, with pits
and pitted

In the freezer–cooking staples in pints and quarts:
• All-Purpose Turkey Broth, page 80 (and turkey wings for more
broth!)
• Simple Tomato Sauce, page 132
• Marinara sauce, page 130
• Summer tomato sauce, page 256
• Bolognese sauce, page 143
• Frozen green peas
• Frozen berries

The Skillets, Pots, and Tools I Cook with at Home
Though there are dozens of skillets hanging near the stove and cupboards full of pots and saucepans, I use the same ones day after day. Probably, all of us cooks have our favorites–they feel familiar and comfortable in our hands; we know how much they hold and how fast they heat.

My everyday pots may be larger than the ones you use now, in part, as I mentioned before, because I always want to have food to send home with others. But large quantity cooking is also essential to my principle of building many dishes from elemental components, like sauces and soup bases, that I freeze for future meals. I hope you will become a convert to the efficiencies, conveniences, and creative possibilities that this style of cooking affords. In which case, you’ll need the big saucepans and soup pots I use and specify in the recipes. A 12-quart stock pot, and 8- and 10-quart heavy saucepans or Dutch ovens, and cast-iron pan, make life much easier and more delicious.

It is also the case that my cooking techniques demand large surface or volume dimensions. This is true of almost every pasta dish I make, for which a 14-inch-diameter skillet is a must. I have two of them, and I use them for everything–meats, vegetables, sauces–so it’s not unusual for both of those great old pans to be on the stove at the same time. I recommend this pan in dozens of recipes in this book, so I hope you will get at least one. I also dependon my heavy-duty roasting pans, 17 by 20 inches or even bigger for my main course roasts. The breadth is necessary, not for massive meat or poultry pieces, but to cook and caramelize a big quantity of vegetables and seasonings and to make a sauce in the roasting pan too.

I am not hooked on gadgets, though I have drawers full of them, often given to me as gifts. As you can glean from the recipes, which specify the cooking tools I use, there are a few things I must have nearby when I’m cooking. For pasta, I always use an Asian-made spider–the stir-fry tool with a wire basket on a long handle–to lift noodles from the cooking pot. I keep spiders in several sizes to use as tossers and stirrers. Metal tongs are also in my hands whenever I’m at the stove; several sizes are useful. Sieves and hand strainers, as well as larger draining baskets and colanders, are also essential implements, as are wooden spoons for mixing. There’s nothing fancy about these things but they are the best extensions of my hands I have used–and hands and fingers are my favorite kitchen tools and the most important of all.

But my recipes, the recipes I share with you in this and other books, can be cooked in any size kitchen. Don’t let this tour of my kitchen deter you. No matter how small your space, make it convenient and comfortable for you and your family. You can also reduce most of the recipes designed to serve six by cutting ingredients in half and using a somewhat smaller cooking vessel. Otherwise cook them as they are and you will have leftovers, which, when revisited creatively, can turn into delightful new dishes. I offer you some of those ideas throughout the book, but use your own imagination.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The best-loved and most-admired of all America's television cooks today, Lidia Bastianich, now gives us her most generous, instructive, and creative cookbook. The emphasis here is on cooking for the family, and her book is filled with unusually delicious basic recipes for everyday eating Italian-style, as well as imaginative ideas for variations and improvisations.

Here are more than 200 fabulous new dishes that will appeal both to Lidia's loyal following, who have come to rely on her wonderfully detailed recipes, and to the more adventurous cook ready to experiment.

• She welcomes us to the table with tasty bites from the sea (including home-cured tuna and mackerel), seasonal salads, and vegetable surprises (Egg-Battered Zucchini Roll-Ups, Sweet Onion Gratinate).

• She reveals the secret of simple make-ahead soup bases, delicious on their own and easy to embellish for a scrumptious soup that can make a meal.

• She opens up the wonderful world of pasta, playing with different shapes, mixing and matching, and creating sauces while the pasta boils; she teaches us to make fresh egg pastas, experimenting with healthful ingredients-whole wheat, chestnut, buckwheat, and barley. And she makes us understand the subtle arts of polenta- and risotto-making as never before.

• She shares her love of vegetables, skillet-cooking some to intensify their flavor, layering some with yesterday's bread for a lasagna-like gratin, blanketing a scallop of meat with sautéed vegetables, and finishing seasonal greens with the perfect little sauce.

• She introduces us to some lesser-known cuts of meats for main courses(shoulders, butts, and tongue) and underused, delicious fish (skate and monkfish), as well as to her family's favorite recipes for chicken and a beautiful balsamic-glazed roast turkey.

• And she explores with us the many ways fruits and crusts (pie, strudel, cakes, and toasted bread) marry and produce delectable homey desserts to end the meal.

Lidia's warm presence is felt on every page of this book, explaining the whys and wherefores of what she is doing, and the brilliant photographs take us right into her home, showing her rolling out pasta with her grandchildren, bringing in the summer harvest, and sitting around the food-laden family table. As she makes every meal a celebration, she invites us to do the same, giving us confidence and joy in the act of cooking.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Fans will appreciate this companion book to Bastianich's latest PBS series of the same name (after Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen), and it may win her some new admirers as well. It presents the food Bastianich prepares at home for her large family (which includes children, grandchildren, siblings and her 80-plus-year-old mother and her companion, who live upstairs), but it's also proof that home cooking need not be oversimplified, with plenty of projects for those who relish a challenge. There are also many photographic illustrations offering gentle guidance to readers attempting Grilled Tuna Rollatini under Tomato-Lemon Marinade, or Pasticciata Bolognese. Elegant recipes, such as Fresh Pear and Pecorino Ravioli, are sprinkled throughout, but the majority are for hearty dishes that lend themselves to serving family-style, like Zucchini and Country Bread Lasagna with day-old bread in place of pasta and Braised Beef Shoulder Roast with Venetian Spice, which incorporates cinnamon and coffee beans. As testament to both Bastianich's creativity and the endless supply of good food from Italy, there are authentic, unusual treasures here, like Riso Sart , which packs risotto into molds for individual towers. Bastianich is also generous with clever tips and brainstorms: Why not use poached garlic pur e for those with delicate digestion, or poach corn on the cob in tomato sauce? The range is impressive, the flavors strong. It's enough to make readers clamor to be adopted into the Bastianich clan. 85 color photos. Agent, Jane Dystel. (Dec. 1) Forecast: A 10-city tour, not to mention the visibility offered by the author's newest PBS series, to begin airing in March 2005, should win plenty of support for the 150,000-copy first printing. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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