Urban Italian: Simple Recipes and True Stories from a Life in Food

by Andrew Carmellini, Gwen Hyman

While waiting for construction to finish on his restaurant A Voce, Andrew Carmellini faced an unusual challenge. After a brilliant career in professional kitchens (including a 6-year tour as chef de cuisine at Café Boulud), he was faced with the harsh reality of life as a civilian no prep cooks, no saucier, no daily deliveries - just him and his wife in their tiny Manhattan-apartment kitchen.

Urban Italian is made up of the recipes that result when a great chef has to use the same resources available to the rest of us. In these hundred recipes - covering five distinct courses, cocktails, and base recipes - Carmellini shows how to make stunning, soulful food with nothing more than the ingredients, techniques, and time available to the ordinary home cook. Recipes include crisped artichokes with yogurt, mint, and sauce picante; duck meatballs with cherry moustarda sauce; roast pork with Italian plums and grappa; spicy cod with rock shrimp; and marinated grapes with red-wine granita.

Along with the recipes (beautifully photographed by Quentin Bacon), Carmellini and his wife, Gwen Hyman, have written a number of sections to help readers bring home more of a great chef's experience. These begin with a narrative that traces Andrew's culinary education, and continue with short pieces on places and ingredients, placed alongside recipes to shed light on the history and practice of simple, beautiful cooking.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Foodie, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 28, 2008

Reviews

[Eunice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best cookbooks I own. I've only made 6 of the recipes, but they have been some of the best dishes I've made. There isn't a single recipe in here that does not look good. The recipes are simple enough to follow, but elegant enough for a nice dinner party. I definitely recommend this book to those who like to cook.

[Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good collection scrumptious Italian recipes! Excellently written so that eveb a beginner can make use of this book to prepare very good meals!

[Terri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love a cook book with lots of color photos and this was has them! I want to be inpsired by the photos as well as the recipes.

Andrew Carmellini's restaurant in New York is being remodeled and the the six month remodel turns into one year. With an extra half year of possible idle time on his hands, Carmellini does what he never does- cooks at home- in a small kitchen- without sous chef or clean-up crew or fresh food deliveries. Carmellini has to, like any other Joe, go buy his ingredients, schlep them home, and cook them up in a not ideal kitchen.

The recipes in this book were all tested in his apartment and so have that fabulous simplicity that allows you to feel that you could make these recipes and succeed.

I really like the layout of the pages; The recipe title is followed by a little trivia and information about the recipe and the amount of time it takes to make. Following are the ingredients very nicely lined out and next to that is the method for preparation. some of the recipes show you step by step how to make, for example, the Squash Tortelloni provides color photos for making and assembling the torelloni.

If you live in or near a decent sized city you can get most all of the ingredients easily and otherwise there is a list at the back for ordering every kind of cheese, desserts, meats, pastas, oils and spices ever needed for great Italian cooking.

You get the full gamut of recipes, appetizers, main dish meats, pasta and seafood and of course, the fabulous Italian desserts like panna cotta and biscotti.

This is an Italian cook book full of fantastic recipes that you really can manage to make at home because Carmellini did first.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is one of those cookbooks where everything sounds delicious and i'd order it in a heartbeat should i see it on a restaurant menu, but not inspired enough to make (most of) it myself.

and it's certainly a restaurant cookbook; each dish has many, many components that fairly intimidating to me, even as someone who likes to spend time and energy in the kitchen. on the flipside, all these different parts could be great for inspiration, and it'd be easy to use his technique for one thing, then adapt or add on to that as you want.

will update this review after i try out the raspberry involtini and fettucine with bacon, corn and shiitake mushrooms.

[LorCon]

What with all the Christmas baking, I haven't actually tried any of the recipes yet but I did bookmark quite a few. The stories are entertaining. What I particularly like is that this book resulted from a restaurant chef being stuck cooking in his NYC apartment kitchen while his new restaurant was under construction. I have a close friend who is a chef and I've noticed that he cooks a lot differently than I do at home. It adds a whole level of difficulty when you only have 4 burners, one oven, two feet of counter space and only one of each kind of pan! Plus no slaves to do the prep work.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun cookbook to read, with tons of interesting anecdotes, but I only found one recipe I wanted to make! Nearly every recipe is meat-centric, and some are a sad, sad travesty, like a fine tiramisu despoiled by grapefruit (?!?). But the photos are beautiful and the stories a lot of fun. If you like Anthony Bourdain, you'll enjoy this.

[LaLa · Rating 2 out of 5]

The pictures were gorgeous but I wasn't captivated by the food writing. I didn't cook a single recipe from the book (never a good sign) they all were complicated or required things I didn't have in the pantry. But Carmellini did inspire me to break down artichokes for the first time and to try brining so all was not lost.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carmellini is a great storyteller and accompanies most of his recipes with a story. The recipes are a bit more complicated than some other Italian cookbooks I own, but the directions are precise and easy to follow. Along with some of the classics which he makes "modo mio" - "My Way" there are lots more unique recipes. As always, a few more pictures of finished recipes would be appreciated.

[P.]

check this out just for the introduction - I feel like he could've gotten a whole memoir deal in this day and age.

I made a pretty rad roasted garlic dressing - wasn't able to try much more than a salad, but the recipes looked delicious.

[Gwen Hyman · Rating 5 out of 5]

...and by Gwen Hyman!
The best cookbook ever, of course. Plus stories.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good, had some good recipes in it too. Talked about how he learned what real Italian cooking was about only after he visited Italy.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't say I actually made anything from this book yet, but I definitely marked a lot of the recipes to try. Many of the vegetable side dishes were simple but had complex flavor combinations.

[Beka · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really long intro (albeit with interesting stories) and some great pictures, but none of the recipes moved me.

[Dona · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice cookbook. While there are very few recipes I'd actually make, I would enjoy trying any of that someone else offered to make!

[Marcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really loved the stories; really liked the recipes. Another oversized cookbook that's hard to handle while reading, though.