Mangiamo con Lidia

REVIEWS BY SYBIL PRATT

Lidia Bastianich, the warm, engaging star of her own PBS cooking series, owns many renowned restaurants, has a line of food and kitchen products and leads epicurean tours of Italy. Her ever-popular cookbooks have invited us to her family table and explored the cuisine of Northern Italy and the Italian-American kitchen. Now, in Lidia's Italy, the companion volume to her new PBS series, she takes us to the 10 places in Italy she loves best and lets us sample her food favorites. We start where Lidia started, in Istria, a crossroads of many cultures, now part of Croatia. Lidia grew up here, then spent a few years in Trieste, our next destination. Both places intrigue with their unique blend of Slavic (sauerkraut with pork) and Italian (potato gnocchi) traditions. On to the north to eat fabulous beef in Barolo, radicchio trevisano and risotto with spinach. Heading south, we stop in Maremma, the "other Tuscany," with its elegant, unusual dishes like pappardelle with long-cooked duck sugo. Rome shows off its lusty, bold flavors; Naples, its zesty pastas and divine desserts; Sicily, its savory seafood and sun-drenched produce; and Puglia, its faro and focaccia. Lidia's daughter, Tanya, is along, too, not for the ride, but to offer end-of-chapter guides to the cultural treasures and out-of-the-way sights in each area. A must-take trip.


Viva Mexico

Mexican cooking is as vibrant, as colorful and as varied as the country itself. But for so long, most of us thought of it as a carbo-carnival of sludgy beans, tasteless, shredded cheese and cardboard tortillas. We know better now, but I doubt that many venture into the elegant, exuberant realms of real Mexican cuisine. You can enter those realms with Roberto Santibañez, an award-winning chef and culinary director of Rosa Mexicano's six splendid restaurants (I say "splendid" from splendid firsthand experience), who offers up 125 recipes, along with 60 luscious full-color photos in Rosa's New Mexican Table. First, a culinary caveat: Great cooking traditions are not static, and though we treasure the "classics," we should treasure innovation within the tradition as well—after all, it's fun to play with your food. While the dishes served at Rosa Mexicano honor tradition, they're light and inventive, "authentic but not orthodox," as Roberto says. The Rosa Mexicano take on guacamole, a signature dish and the best guac ever, uses a simple, unique chili paste to give it depth; poblanos are stuffed with spinach and goat cheese; enchiladas are filled with crabmeat zipped to perfection with spicy habanero escabeche, one of Roberto's 17 "indispensables," the condiments that give so many of these dishes their energy and sparkle. With Señor Santibañez's step-by-step support, your table can be as magically Mexican as Rosa's.


Martha to the rescue

Martha Stewart has the miraculous gift of knowing what her audience wants and giving it to them. She launched Everyday Food, a digest-sized magazine devoted to simple, satisfying dinners made with a minimum of fuss and filled with maximum flavor, in 2003. Two years later she and her talented minions added a companion TV series that airs on PBS. Now Martha and Co. have gathered 250 recipes from the magazine into a gorgeously illustrated cookbook called Everyday Food: Great Food Fast. The recipes are divided by season and each one has a full-color photograph of the finished, plated dish so you know what you're aiming for. Anyone familiar with Martha-managed recipes knows that the directions are simple and straightforward with extra tips tucked in and the header notes, helpful. It's spring, so try the cream of asparagus soup, lamb chops with fresh mint-pepper sauce, gingered sugar snaps and rhubarb crisp, then keep these easy winner dinners coming as the seasons change.


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