Molto Gusto_ Easy Italian Cooking - Mario Batali [0]
Easy Italian Cooking at Home
Mario Batali and Mark Ladner
Photography by
Quentin Bacon
Art Direction by
Douglas Riccardi and Lisa Eaton
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
SUSI, BENNO & LEO
for whom gusto is a way of life—MARIO
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK MY FAMILY,
CHRISTINE, RILEY & JASPER,
for their support and patience—MARK
Contents
Introduction
1. Vegetable Antipasti
2· Seafood & Meat Antipasti
3. Bruschetta & Cheese
4· Insalata
5· Pasta
6· Pizza
7· Gelato & Sorbetto
Glossary
Sources
Searchable Terms
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Mario Batali
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
I have written and spoken perhaps too many words about Italian food and how and why I translate its inherent excellence and deliciousness to the American table. I have been on and in several thousand television shows and explained to a very large audience the philosophy of the Italian family, the importance of the table in daily life, and the significance of regional variations and the fierce respect and love for these regional differences from town to town—and even from home to home on the same street. I have and will continue to espouse this Italian strategy, and I love to interpret it and illuminate it for the many of us who are Italians, whether or not we were born there—that is, we have ancestral roots there—and for the many of us who merely want to be Italians, at least at the dinner table.
Us is a big word these days, and I do not use it lightly. Who are we? By we, I mean those like-minded individuals who seek out the delicious, the traditional, the innovative, the unique, and the geo-specific in the world of nutrition and pleasure at the table, almost always in the company of others like us or of the same mind. We like to shop for food and prepare it, we like to braise, roast, poach, and steam. We have some but not all of the equipment we have seen on the cooking shows, and we have access to many great regional ingredients in our own towns. We lust after the first asparagus of the season, we anxiously await the first local strawberries or cherries, and we are not afraid of either simple or many-step recipes. We love the change from merely slicing tomatoes and adding salt to complex braising as summer fades and autumn slides in. We sometimes plan menus for get-togethers weeks, or even a month or two, in advance. We are the cooks the houseware companies want to sell to. We are the readers of Food & Wine and Bon Appétit and of the local newspaper food pages, and we are the core audience of anything written by Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, and Alice Waters. But we are not snobs or elitists, and we love it when other people cook for us. We like simple food.
In the last few years, the idea that there are social costs associated with the decisions we make at the grocery store and at the table has become quite compelling. At all of the restaurants I own, we have spent significant time thinking these decision-based costs through, and we have taken many steps to prove our pro-planet resolve, never at the loss of flavor and pleasure, but often in the face of seemingly significant profit motives. Among other things, we no longer sell imported bottled water, a reflection of our thoughts on the use of limited resources in energy and other raw materials we consider important. We have become “green-certified” at nearly every location, installing efficient lighting, composting our carbon-based waste, and recycling all plastic and glass. We are buying hormone-free meat and poultry products, and in many cases we have driven our menus to a place with less and less protein as the main event. At no place is this drive toward less protein more evident than at Otto Pizzeria Enoteca. The idea that our protein-heavy diet has far-reaching implications, including energy and resource management as well as global warming, may seem new, but the traditional agrarian European diet is actually anything but “hot off the press.”
What seems to be all the rage in the smart world of foodies is simply