I often give cookbooks as gifts during the holiday season, for brides-to-be at their showers and for birthdays. The "go-withs," extra items that make the books more special — whether a bottle of wine, pasta or other culinary treat — usually find their way into the package.
The diversity of this season’s new books is astonishing. Last week, I wrote about The Craft of the Cocktail by Dale DeGroff. No sooner than I filed my column, I found stainless-steel cocktail shakers on sale at Strawbridge’s for around $14. Matching a kitchen gadget or another extra with a cookbook is fun.
Make It Italian: The Taste And Technique of Italian Home Cooking by Nancy Verde Barr ($29.95, Alfred A. Knopf, hardbound, full-color photographs) is a marvelous primer for those who love cucina. Barr gives perfectly written recipes that serve up to five, advises on stocking the Italian pantry and defines each ingredient. Her book is peppered with childhood memories of her nonna and nonno and the rest of her family. After I studied the book, I discovered Barr to be the Marcella Hazan of the 21st century. Her book reminded me of Hazan’s The Classic Italian Cookbook, which was published more than 30 years ago.
The list of choices for a "go-with" here is endless. A selection of Italian cheeses, a bottle of deep-green Tuscan extra-virgin olive oil, several pounds of dried pasta imported from Italy in a variety of shapes or a bottle of top-quality Italian wine are excellent choices.
Nancy Silverton is one of America’s finest artisan bakers. She and her husband Mark Peel own the Le Brea Bakery and Campanile Restaurant in Los Angeles. When Silverton decided to add sandwiches to her Thursday-night menu at Campanile, a cookbook was born.
Nancy Silverton’s Sandwich Book ($24.95, Alfred A. Knopf, full-color photographs) is a must for all sandwich lovers on your list. This is no boiled-ham-and-cheese-on-rye book. Silverton’s creativity between slices of bread — from sourdough to Jewish rye to brioche — is inspiring. I particularly like all the open-faced sandwiches she has invented. Sweets play a role here as well, as recipes for sandwich cookies also are highlighted.
You can have a great time hunting down the "go-withs" for this delightful book. Condiments from around the world, such as mustards, flavored mayonnaises, chutneys and relishes, complement all kinds of sandwiches. So do olives and good half-sour deli dill pickles.
The book now on my bedside table is Katharine Graham’s Washington, ($30, Alfred A. Knopf, with black-and-white photographs), an 800-page delight filled with essays written by journalists and D.C. insiders from World War I to the present. Graham, who was the publisher of The Washington Post and received the Pulitzer Prize for her autobiography Personal History, was working on the book when she died last year. Fortunately for us, she was able to complete the majority of introductions to each essay. What does food have to do with our nation’s capital? The book is chock-full of tidbits.
You will discover why Mamie Eisenhower fired the White House French chef, and the kinds of exotic foods served by Perle Mesta, one of the nation’s most famous and outspoken hostesses. Journalist Joseph Alsop, who was a fine gourmet cook, wrote about dining in Washington, while Ellen Maury Sladen, a congressman’s wife, listed the dishes and the prices for a circa-World War I dinner party for 18.
Henrietta Nesbitt’s musings on life as White House housekeeper and cook for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt are the most timely. She lists the menu for their first Christmas dinner in the White House in 1933, describes how to make a fruitcake (you’ll have to play with the recipe, as this dynamo baked hundreds of them) and White House eggnog. The go-with? A fruitcake, of course.
Here are recipes from new cookbooks.
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Cabbage and Sausage Soup
From Make It Italian
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1-1/2 pounds Italian sweet sausage, casing removed
2 medium onions, thinly sliced (about 3 cups)
3 large garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
Salt
1/4 teaspoon hot red-pepper flakes
2 teaspoons fennel seed
1-1/2 pounds Savoy cabbage or regular green cabbage, shredded
2 cups fresh or canned Italian plum tomatoes, with juices, chopped
6 cups unsalted meat broth
3 to 4 tablespoons red-wine vinegar
1 cup ditalini or tubetti
Directions:
Measure the oil into the soup pan and set it over medium heat. Tear the sausage into pieces and drop them into the pan. Work quickly to break the meat into pieces about the size of shelled walnut halves and cook until it begins to brown. Stir in the onions and garlic. Season with salt and red pepper. Cook gently until the onions are limp. Stir in the fennel seeds and cook for one minute to blend flavors.
Use a long, sturdy wooden spoon or fork to stir the cabbage into the onions and sausage so the pieces are nicely distributed. Season lightly and cook on low heat until the cabbage wilts, about 10 minutes. Keep the heat low enough and stir the pan frequently so that the cabbage wilts but does not brown.
While the cabbage is limp, pour in the tomatoes, season and bring their juices to a boil so they will reduce by about a third. Add the broth and the vinegar and bring again to a boil. Taste the soup after adding 3 tablespoons of the vinegar, and decide if you want to add more. It should be subtly tangy.
Stir in the pasta and turn down the heat so the soup simmers. Stir occasionally to prevent the pasta from sticking. When the pasta is cooked al dente, eight to 10 minutes, check the seasonings and serve.
Makes 11 cups.
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French Baguette with Butter and Prosciutto
From Nancy Silverton’s Sandwich Book
Ingredients:
Scallion oil, optional, recipe follows
1-1/2 baguettes (not sourdough), cut into 4 (7-inch) pieces
1-1/2 sticks unsalted butter, slightly softened but not greasy
6 ounces prosciutto di Parma, prosciutto di Daniele or Serrano ham, thinly cut into about 24 slices
Ingredients for scallion oil:
1 bunch scallions, green parts only (about 1/3 cup)
1/3 cup coarsely chopped Italian parsley leaves
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Directions:
Place the scallions and parsley in the food processor and process until finely chopped. Add the olive oil and process another few seconds to combine.
Slice through the center of each piece of baguette horizontally.
To assemble the sandwiches, smear 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter over the bottom half of each baguette piece. If using scallion oil, spoon 1 to 2 tablespoons of it over and place about six slices of rumpled prosciutto on top. Put the top half of the baguette over the ham and squeeze the sandwich together with your fingers to compress it before taking the first bite.
Serves four.
