Italian
Easy
Recipes from the London River Café
By
Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers
(Clarkson Potter/Publishers, June 2004)
In the case of
Italian
Easy: Recipes from the London River Café,
we’re glad that looks can be deceiving. They’re
in your face, to say the least. The title—multicolored
block lettering that stretches to fill the entire cover—sits
atop a mirror-like silver background. Uh oh. Is this going
to be another statement about food as art? Flashy food?
Celebrity? We were expecting a cookbook.
Well,
we were pleasantly surprised by what lay a few short pages
beyond the canary yellow inside cover. For starters, we
found a competent and exciting selection of simple bruschetta,
like Asparagus Parmesan, Fig Arugula, Chickpea Swiss Chard,
and Ricotta Red Chiles. There were 24 in all and we wish
we could have tasted every one.
Authors
Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers are best known, of course, as
the founders of London’s River Café—way
out in Hammersmith. River Café is modern Italian
cooking at its best... and most expensive. It is wildly
successful and approaching the age of 20. What Gray and
Rogers set out to do in Italian Easy is make the
same kind of food accessible to those of us with limited
time to spare in the kitchen and grocery store. With a handful
of ingredients they make it possible to dish up Sausage
and Wine, and a side of Mashed Potatoes with Parmesan in
well under an hour. And while you are working on that, there’s
time enough to put together a sinful, sublime and perfect
flourless chocolate cake they’ve named Nemesis.
Once
you get beyond the sometimes off-putting design of Italian
Easy, there’s a lot to like. The authors stick
to their mission and keep us happily cooking and eating
in the land of simple, soulful, brilliant and satisfying.
The chapter on bruschetta leads to some two-dozen plus antipasti
like Crab and Fennel Salad, a nicely briny Green Bean and
Anchovy, and divine Porcini and Parmesan. If only there
were enough space to talk forever about the soups—instead,
make a beeline for the Pumpkin Crostini Soup, but don’t
forget to make time for the ten others, like Artichoke and
Potato or Pea, Pancetta, and Zucchini.
Interestingly,
different pastas merit individual chapters: Spaghetti, Short
Pasta, and Tagliatelle. So, you’ll find nine delightful
spaghetti including good old Butter and Cheese, Pea and
Scallion, and Tomato and Anchovy. Short pastas are Orecchiette
with Broccoli, Fusilli Carbonara and Penne with Sausage
and Ricotta. Tagliatelle with Fig and Chile is at once haunting
and delicious, while Green Bean and Tomato is everything
summer.
Ricotta
deserves to be celebrated and Italian Easy gives
us gnudi (boiled dumplings of ricotta), Stuffed Zucchini
Flowers and Sformata di Ricotta—a baked custardy concoction
of riches including ricotta and tomatoes. Italian Easy’s
seven risottos are just fine and seafoods are wonderful
(note to self: Sicilian Fish Stew is perfect for company),
but Birds are where we lingered and loved—Chicken
in Milk is first browned in butter, then braised in milk.
The sauce thickens and curdles and it’s indescribably
delicious. Meats are as simple as Beef Steak Fiorentina
(a grilled T-bone, that’s the recipe) and as wintery
and traditional as Cotechino Lentils—a good luck dish
of garlicky sausage with mustard-spiked lentils, served
with mustard fruits (in this case pears) and salsa verde.
Potatoes
get their own chapter, and that’s a good thing because
they deserve the extra attention—whether it’s
Roast Potatoes in a Pan or Gnocchi with Prosciutto. That
also makes it easier to focus on what’s next: the
wonderfully Italian approach to vegetables such as Fava
Beans and Peas, Spinach and Balsamic, Green Beans and Tomatoes…Grilled
Radicchio.
Italian
Easy does not skimp on desserts, either. There’s
a whole chapter and more than two dozen fruit and ice cream
recipes including Fig Sorbet, and Marsala Ice Cream. Then
there are Italian biscotti, then four almond cakes. We loved
the Polenta Crumble. Last, and deadliest, are chocolate
cakes—five variations on flourless chocolate confections,
including the aforementioned Nemesis.
We’ve
had our say about design, a topic we try to avoid unless
it has a particularly good or bad impact on the overall
experience of the book. More importantly, we loved what
we found inside Italian Easy. It lived up to its
title and the authors’ promise. The recipes were delicious,
uncomplicated and easy to follow—although the format
of ingredient first, quantity second, was a bit challenging.
We’ll pull Italian Easy from the shelf frequently.
It won’t be hard to spot—that’s for sure.
Reviewed
by Kevin Schoeler
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