Member Reviews
I would definitely buy this book as I am Jewish and love Italian food. I would just prefer there were more photographs. It is also difficult to read the book as a Kindle file.
As an Italian American, I really thought I had a good understanding of Italian cuisine. This book adds a new perspective to me.
Written almost as a love letter to the authors family and heritage. Wonderful family pictures and backstory.
This was a beautiful book. It's filled with delicious recipes for some scrumptious food. I tried quite a few recipes and made them for my family which they enjoyed very much. I bought a copy for my collection. The recipes are easy to follow.
This was such an interesting read. I especially enjoyed reading about the kosher diet and how / why some things were kosher and some were not. The history was fascinating. The food just made me drool. A good gift book for a foodie.
I really enjoyed reading this cookbook and studying the recipes! The flow of the book was nice and the pictures were stunning! I really want to own this one because I really loved the Jewish flavors that were in Italian cuisine I have been cooking all my life.
Deeply personal, moving, stunning cookbook showing a glimpse into the lives and food of the Roman Jewish community. The pictures are gorgeous, the stories are relevant, the food is extraordinarily. I’ll be purchasing a copy of this for my personal cookbook collection.
A delightful book introducing Jewish Italian dishes and the most wonderful extended family of the author. Some recipes are adaptations of ones that are familiar. Others reflect how Jews have been treated - one recipe named after sticks that were used to beat them! Definitely a cookbook to dip into
This book is a stunning collection of history, culture, family and culinary delights. Regardless if you are Jewish or Italian or neither, any lover of cooking and food history can appreciate this thorough collection in one beautifully presented package. The photography is fantastic, with lots to look at while you delve into history and recipes. At the beginning of her book Silvia Nacamulli explains in her book that " Italian Jewish Cuisine is therefore a story of migration, creativity and necessity..." and she expertly takes the reader through the history of it through the eyes of herself and her family. She then covers all the bases of Jewish cooking rules vs customs and practices and then on to foods for the holidays and how they are celebrated in her community. I love that she pairs each holiday with the appropriate menu options for each holiday.
The recipes themselves are very easy to read and simple to follow, with stunning photography on every page. The 4 recipes that I have tried so far were delicious- enjoyed by myself and my family. I also found the recipes easy to execute with no food item that is too hard to source or techniques that require a culinary degree. There is nothing more frustrating than a cook book that is unapproachable. This book is the exact opposite. It both equally enjoyable to read in a comfy chair as it is to dive in the recipes in the kitchen. As an ARC, I was provided with a digital copy of this book which blew me away with is layout and photos etc. I can only imagine that the hard-copy will be even more stunning.
*Thank you so much to Netgalley and Pen & Sword Publishing for giving me an ARC of this cookbook to enjoy in exchange for my honest review*
Enjoyably eatable cookbook
Nacamulli tells and hows how the story of the Jews in Italy is intricatably linked to the Italians, the land itself and the food it provides. How the rules of religion shapes the food and how clever cooks circumnavigate rules and supply to create delicious food whilst keeping within boundaries of law and boundaries of supply and availability.
I've already tried some of the fabulous recipes:
Merduma - a spicy tomato dip - which we devoured with Maltese bread
Chicken Ezekiel - devoured a well
I've a whole list of others on my immediate to cook list and I'm looking forward to more.
I thought this book was magnificently researched and well written. However, for me, it was too wordy. I also felt that the presentation was old fashioned. As a compulsive cookbook collector and as a Jewess I was excited to review this book and perhaps purchase it.
I love this kind of cookbook (the mentality of being a 'cook' but not a 'chef', where you are encouraged to stick to your family traditions and not to worry too much if you have the wrong size of egg) - and as an Italian-American reader, the recipes in this book felt so familiar to me, but with a new context that broadened my understanding of my own culinary traditions. And as a vegetarian, I'm looking forward to trying many of the kosher, meat-omitted versions of my favorite dishes!
I think the personal information and historical context were really front-loading the book, but it was enjoyable to learn more about the writer and her family. I think the pacing of recipe and context was excellent after the introductory section, and I loved the information about the shifting Jewish community in Italy as well as surprising minutia about their culinary traditions, like the note about eggplant and fennel initially being mostly eaten by Italian Jews while other Italians eschewed them. Plus, I was happy to see that many of the recipes had quick tips about things like how best to reheat, or what substitutions to use, and there was an aside in a recipe for pasta fagioli that explained to me why my pasta always comes out underdone in soups (it takes pasta longer to absorb the water in thicker broths!) Overall, I'm really happy with this book, and looking forward to spending more time with these recipes.
Silvia Nacamulli's "Jewish Flavours of Italy" is a detailed collection of recipes, history, and family memories that embrace both Jewish and Italian cultures. For those who are interested, there is an interesting overview of Italian Jewry as well as Nacamulli's personal family stories. She also details the Jewish holidays and gives cooking tips for those who may need them. Often, cookbooks with this much up-front detail tend to have less recipes. But not this cookbook - within the pages are a large full repertoire of recipes. I like that the food recipes are grouped by type ( "soup, pasta, matzah and rice" and "vegetable dishes" for example) rather than by holiday or ingredient. When I want to make a soup, I want to know where to find the recipe!
There are thoughtful detailed instructions with each recipe as well as many photos. If you need explanations and examples, you will find them. If you are an impatient cook like myself, you can flit through the well-laid out recipes and find whatyou need. Prep time, Cooking, tips, ingredients are all laid out in an easy-to-read format.
Do you ever succumb to a purchase of a beautiful cookbook but then find yourself not using it because the recipes are too involved or obscure? This book will not be one of those purchases. There are basics like tomato sauces, soups and challah bread but also a few more involved recipes like Buricche (traditional savoury parcels). Also, Italian cooking in general is inherently (in my opinion) approachable and practical - so the recipes are all approachable and simple to master.
I have tried the Torta di Mele (apple cake - yum!), the Pizza d' Azzima (simple and clever!) and the Lasagne al Sugo (I prefer this to a traditional meat version). Everything has been delicious. The recipes themselves are clear and straightfoward. The measurements are spot-on. I can't wait to cook my way through the rest of this book.
I love Jewish and Italian foods, so getting a chance to read Jewish Flavors of Italy was really appealing to me.
Not only is this volume a wonderful collection of recipes (and there are many!), but it also details the remarkable history of Italian Jewry, and she intertwines her own family’s history in Italy, including tales of how many of her family members survived the Holocaust. She also discusses the evolution of Jewish cooking in Italy, with its many influences coming from Jews from various countries emigrated to Italy and brought their own traditions, foods and spices with them.
A fascinating volume filled with detailed recipes that I absolutely can’t wait to try.
My thanks to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing an ARC of the book.
I don't normally review cookbooks but this somehow showed up in my Netgalley suggestions and looked really good. And it was good, but very interesting as well as there is a fascinating introduction of Jewish life and cuisine in Italy.
It appears the Jewish community in Rome has uninterruptedly lived there since 70 AD. 90% of the recipes are therefore quintessential Italian, but tweaked here and there to respect kosher rules (no pork, no mixing of dairy and meat). I didn't know that it was the Jews who first started importing the aubergine from America and who first introduced the tomato in Italian cooking.
I loved especially the pasta and veggies chapters, which also contain a lot of little tips (dont put too much sauce in your parmigiana di melanzane, put pepper on onions if you don't want to cry)
This may be one of my favourite cooking books from 2022. It starts off with some history which I really enjoyed to read and then we go into the recipes and of course some info for the context of the chapter or recipes. I loved how the Italian names for the recipes were written there and we didn't receive only the English names. And the recipes look simple but so tasty. I am going to get this book for myself when it will publish.
This book is so much more than a cookbook. I found the recipes to be fabulous and am eager to try some of these. The xxx and xxx had me drooling on the pages.
The addition of stories and history really set this book apart from so many other cookbooks. I felt that nit only was Silvia sharing her recipes, but she was sharing herself…her story and her history…and this made it so much more personal and heartwarming for me.
My husband (1st generation Italian) and I went to Italy 9/2019 and we toured the ghetto in Rome and they had hands down the best fried artichokes and crisp white wine I've ever had! So, I was very excited to get this cookbook however, I think there was a lot of things that didn't translate (literally and figuratively).....
1. I had problems opening it on my netgalley app so it was hard and time consuming to read the recipe and see the pictures
2. The quality of ingredients (Italian food v. Metro Detroit Italian grocery stores) left something to be desired. No matter how good a recipe is the quality of fresh Italian produce does not convert to American grown food, even when we bough from my husbands family owned Italian grocery store (Nino Salvaggios)
3. There was a lack of seasonings in this book-I wanted to make the recipes exactly as described but some of the food turned out bland and we had to add salt and pepper. We have made 4 recipes so far (lamb, chicken, artichokes and pizza) and this was true with all of them.
I thought this was a really lovely book. It's more than just a cookbook. It has beautiful stories of family and heritage. I liked the recipes too. This is a book I could savor over for a long time. Can't wait to get a copy when it comes out!
Thank you NetGalley & the publisher for this ARC!
Lovers of history and food will find Jewish Flavours of Italy: A Family Cookbook well-written and fascinating, and will not only want to cook dozens of the recipes, but also curl up in a corner and enjoy. The beginning of the cookbook outlines the history of the Jews in Italy, as well as keeping kosher. There are also chapters on ingredients, cooking equipment, and other helpful information. Once readers are versed on the histor and basics, they will want to go on to the amazing recipes, which are absolutely mouthwatering. There are so many excellent recipes, that many cooks will want to make something every day for a month or so from this cookbook. These are recipes that nobody will ever get tired of.
The recipes are concise, simply written, and easy-to-follow. Cooks with skills from beginner to advanced will easily be able to follow the recipes and turn out picture-perfect results. The photographs are beautiful, and almost every recipe is pictured. There are also beautiful photographs of Italy and the historical aspect of Italy and how the author’s family survived through history. The recipes are for dishes that most of us will actually want to cook and serve; none of those recipes that look nice, but aren’t doable. Most of the ingredients are easily found in any major grocery store, and many are already on anyone’s well-stocked pantry shelves.
All told, this is an excellent and beautiful cookbook. It should be on the cookbook shelf of anyone serious about delicious Italian cooking.
Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.
The concept of this book is very interesting and it prompted me to request the title. While the food in this book wasn't to my taste, I think the mixing of cuisines from two cultures was very interesting and unique.
Pros:
Many of the recipes had pictures.
All the recipes seemed logical and comprehensive.
The recipes and concepts were very unique.
Cons:
None of the recipes were to my taste and some seemed like they wouldn't work well.
I wish all the recipes had pictures.
Overall, I think this book was worth trying out and if you are more adventurous with your food you might find a lot of things to like with this book. I'm not adventurous so most of these recipes held little appeal to me. I think this book is worth taking a look at, at the very least for the nice photography.