The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Italian: Recipes from the New and Old Worlds, Simplified for the American Kitchen

Italian cooking is very diversified. Venice is big on fish and seafood while the inland areas eat more meats. Jeff Smith's book is as close to authentic Italian cooking as one can get. The sheer number of recipes alone will give a person an insight of how Italian cuisine influenced modern American food.

The amazing thing is that there is at least one recipe that I wanted to try that I couldn't find all the ingridients for. It called for a Sicilian wine and being stationed near Venice I couldn't find it in any of the local wine stores. Great book. I will continue to use it for years after I come back to the US. It will remind me of the years that I spent here.


Great book for neophyte Italian cooks.   June 28, 1998
The Italian Stallion (ajgrot0@sac.uky.edu) (Chicago)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

As an Italian tired of Olive Garden-fare Italian cuisine, I bought Smith's book with two ideas in mind: 1) I wanted to understand both the context of the dishes I hoped to prepare and the constituent ingredients (for instance, how is Parmesan-Reggiano made?) and 2) coming to the book with little previous cooking experience -- let alone Italian cooking -- I wanted to be able to prepare most of the dishes in the book. Smith's book excelled at both these. The book is well-written and easy to follow, but avoids pedantry. Some of my favorite recipes are: Italian peasant bread, Italian Rolled Chicken, Bracciole, and the Fresh Tomato Sauce Sicilian.