Lidia's Commonsense Italian Cooking

October 15, 2013
Having extensively surveyed the world of Italian and Italian American cooking in previous books and television series, indefatigable and entrepreneurial Bastianich seems bent on creating a new sort of Italian cooking for American kitchens that crosses time-honored boundaries and looks to fashion a more relaxed but no-less-appealing cuisine. She has partnered with her art-historian daughter before, but now the two of them offer readers such uncommon fare as potatoes baked in beer, eggplant and rice parmigiana, and veggie meatballs. Traditionally unadorned pasta carbonara gets some sliced artichokes in its cream-and-egg sauce. Desserts include an apple cake, cookies, and several variations of rice pudding. Most dishes can be readily reproduced, but acquiring razor clams away from the Atlantic coast may be daunting. The authors' celebrity and their upcoming public-television series mark this a cookbook sure to be in great demand.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)