Eating Rome, Living the Good Life in the Eternal City by Elizabeth Minchilli
Eating Rome, Elizabeth Minchilli, St Martin’s Press, April 2015, 230 pages, ISBN: 978-1-250-04784-7 ebook
Some people buy cookbooks intending to cook from the recipes; others buy cookbooks to read, regarding them as armchair travelogues with tasting notes. For me, books about food are among the most evocative writings about places and times, so I count myself firmly among the second group. It’s a moot point these days whether books with recipes have any future in a world where almost anything you want to cook can be found at the click of a google. There are still exceptions. The wonderful collections of recipes by Sami Tamimi and Yotam Ottolenghi are books to read and use. Their extraordinary Jerusalem is both a usable collection of recipes and an extraordinary chronicle of a remarkable city.
Elizabeth Minchilli’s Eating Rome, a delightful memoire of one American woman’s Italianization aspires to this tradition. It’s a tough act to follow, but Elizabeth manages to bring wit and passion to her stories of food-life in Italy.
When she was barely twelve years old, her suddenly peripatetic parents decided to move her and her two siblings to Rome. That experiment lasted two years, and left the author with an unquenchable passion for Italy. Later, university studies in Florence and marriage to Domenico from Puglia sealed the her fate.
Within the twenty-five food-centric chapters of Eating Rome, ranging from How to Feed a Roman Dog / How to feed a Roman Baby, through How to Eat Gelato, to Learning to Love Grappa, the reader gets a crash course on what Italian food is really all about, and in the process, is given a wry, loving portrait of life in modern day Italy.
Most of the chapters follow a similar pattern: an introductory section presenting the issues, followed by suggestions, where to buy ingredients, recommended cafés or restaurants and closes with two or three recipes. I’ve used Chapter 15, To panino or not to panino? That is the Roman question. As an example to stand for the rest, as it is typical.
Beginning with the vexed question of when do Italians eat panini, she explores the difficulty of persuading her Italian husband and daughters that ‘sandwiches’ can in fact be a real meal.
The next section, Anatomy of a Roman Panino, moves onto the construction,: the bread, with explanations of the different regional types used; followed, of course with: the filling: mortadella or … and finally after explaining the difference, several suggestions for enjoying old and new styles of panini. The concluding recipe section includes the Italian picnic and beach favourite, panino di frittata.
It’s a format that works extremely well. We get an sauce pot full of useful and accurate information about eating in Italy in an amusing, pain-free manner. The photography throughout, which is Mrs Minchilli’s own, is as delicious as the food she is describing.
My only real criticism is the America-centric-ness of it all. You do have European readers after all. I especially wish that metric measurements had also been more consistently provided alongside the American cup style. Nonetheless, for armchair travellers or anyone planning a trip to Rome in the near future, this will help you get through the long winter, or the weeks until your departure. 5 tasty *****
Caveat emptor: As a long time reader of Elizabeth’s blog and follower of her Twitter and Instagram accounts, when the ARC for this became available on NetGalley, I jumped all over it. My expectations were more than met.
Some people buy cookbooks intending to cook from the recipes; others buy cookbooks to read, regarding them as armchair travelogues with tasting notes. For me, books about food are among the most evocative writings about places and times, so I count myself firmly among the second group. It’s a moot point these days whether books with recipes have any future in a world where almost anything you want to cook can be found at the click of a google. There are still exceptions. The wonderful collections of recipes by Sami Tamimi and Yotam Ottolenghi are books to read and use. Their extraordinary Jerusalem is both a usable collection of recipes and an extraordinary chronicle of a remarkable city.
Elizabeth Minchilli’s Eating Rome, a delightful memoire of one American woman’s Italianization aspires to this tradition. It’s a tough act to follow, but Elizabeth manages to bring wit and passion to her stories of food-life in Italy.
When she was barely twelve years old, her suddenly peripatetic parents decided to move her and her two siblings to Rome. That experiment lasted two years, and left the author with an unquenchable passion for Italy. Later, university studies in Florence and marriage to Domenico from Puglia sealed the her fate.
Within the twenty-five food-centric chapters of Eating Rome, ranging from How to Feed a Roman Dog / How to feed a Roman Baby, through How to Eat Gelato, to Learning to Love Grappa, the reader gets a crash course on what Italian food is really all about, and in the process, is given a wry, loving portrait of life in modern day Italy.
Most of the chapters follow a similar pattern: an introductory section presenting the issues, followed by suggestions, where to buy ingredients, recommended cafés or restaurants and closes with two or three recipes. I’ve used Chapter 15, To panino or not to panino? That is the Roman question. As an example to stand for the rest, as it is typical.
Beginning with the vexed question of when do Italians eat panini, she explores the difficulty of persuading her Italian husband and daughters that ‘sandwiches’ can in fact be a real meal.
The next section, Anatomy of a Roman Panino, moves onto the construction,: the bread, with explanations of the different regional types used; followed, of course with: the filling: mortadella or … and finally after explaining the difference, several suggestions for enjoying old and new styles of panini. The concluding recipe section includes the Italian picnic and beach favourite, panino di frittata.
It’s a format that works extremely well. We get an sauce pot full of useful and accurate information about eating in Italy in an amusing, pain-free manner. The photography throughout, which is Mrs Minchilli’s own, is as delicious as the food she is describing.
My only real criticism is the America-centric-ness of it all. You do have European readers after all. I especially wish that metric measurements had also been more consistently provided alongside the American cup style. Nonetheless, for armchair travellers or anyone planning a trip to Rome in the near future, this will help you get through the long winter, or the weeks until your departure. 5 tasty *****
Caveat emptor: As a long time reader of Elizabeth’s blog and follower of her Twitter and Instagram accounts, when the ARC for this became available on NetGalley, I jumped all over it. My expectations were more than met.