When Fabio Viviani was growing up in a housing project in Florence, Italy, the center of his world was the kitchen, where his mother, grandmother, and especially his great-grandmother instilled in him a love for cooking and good food. Now he shares the best of Italian home cooking while telling the story of his hardscrabble childhood, his success as a chef in the United States, and the women in his family who inspired him. In more than 150 delicious recipes, Viviani takes us from his family home, where his great-grandmother taught him to make staples like Italian Apple Cake and Homemade Ricotta, to the kitchen of a local trattoria, where he honed his craft cooking restaurant favorites like Gnocchi and the Perfect Tiramisu, and then across Italy where he studied each region's finest recipes, from Piedmont's Braised Ossobuco to Emilia Romagna's Perfect Meat Sauce. A gorgeously illustrated cookbook, Fabio's Italian Kitchen is a celebration of food and family that brings all the joy, fun, and flair that Fabio Viviani embodies to your kitchen. Fabio Viviani was born in Florence, Italy, and became a sous chef at Il Pallaio, a trattoria in Firenze, at the age of sixteen. He now works as the owner and executive chef of Cafe Firenze, a renowned Italian restaurant in Ventura County, California, and Osteria Firenze, a Los Angeles Italian eatery. He has appeared on Top Chef (season five), Top Chef All Stars, and Life After Top Chef. From growing up in a Florentine housing project to charming millions on Top Chef, Italian chef Fabio Viviani blends his amazing personal story with his favorite recipes from his home country. Fabio shares the best of Italian home cooking while telling the story of his own, hardscrabble Italian childhood (and subsequent success upon arrival in US) and especially the women in his life mother and great grandmother who taught him to cook and inspired him. The book will feature photos and over 150 recipes with stories, including Viviani staples (Italian Apple Cake, 7 Flavors Meat), restaurant favorites (Gnocchi, the Perfect Tiramisu), and recipes from his travels and apprenticeships across different regions of Italy (Braised Ossobuco from Piedmont, the Perfect Meat Sauce from Emilia Romagna).

“In this amazing book, Fabio shows you how to make delicious Italian dishes easily and quickly! It’s the next best thing to having him in your kitchen.” —Antonia Lofaso, Chef and Restaurateur of Scopa Italian Roots, The Local Peasant, Sycamore Tavern and Black Market Liquor Bar Dinner doesn’t have to be daunting. In half an hour or less you can cook up an Italian meal at home like a professional chef. In this case, just like Top Chef star Fabio Viviani. Infused with his warmth and humor, this book brings Fabio into your kitchen. If Fresh Fettuccini with Manila Clams and Spicy Sausages and Chicken Pizzaiola with Mozzarella and Pepperoni seem like recipes that are out of reach, think again. Fabio shows home chefs how to cook “Grandma Style” (that is, like an intuitive Italian), and even those on a tight schedule will soon be whipping up great dinners. The over 100 no-fail recipes include Mascarpone and Ricotta-Stuffed Peaches, 15-Minute Seafood Cioppino, and Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake. Fabio’s 30 Minute Italian provides lots of time saving tips, from freezing batches of herbs and dressing to making your own pasta dough in three minutes tops. Along the way, Fabio shares stories from his early life in Florence where he apprenticed at age five to his wheel-chair-bound and wooden-spoon-wielding great-grandmother to his American life cooking dinner for his wife and infant son in Chicago. Gorgeously illustrated throughout, and filled with his through-the-roof energy and charisma, Fabio’s 30 Minute Italian is guaranteed to make you enjoy your time in the kitchen—and the results!

Spaghetti with meatballs, fettuccine alfredo, margherita pizzas, ricotta and parmesan cheeses—we have Italy to thank for some of our favorite comfort foods. Home to a dazzling array of wines, cheese, breads, vegetables, and salamis, Italy has become a mecca for foodies who flock to its pizzerias, gelateries, and family-style and Michelin-starred restaurants. Taking readers across the country’s regions and beyond in the first book in Reaktion’s new Foods and Nations series, Al Dente explores our obsession with Italian food and how the country’s cuisine became what it is today. Fabio Parasecoli discovers that for centuries, southern Mediterranean countries such as Italy fought against food scarcity, wars, invasions, and an unfavorable agricultural environment. Lacking in meat and dairy, Italy developed foodways that depended on grains, legumes, and vegetables until a stronger economy in the late 1950s allowed the majority of Italians to afford a more diverse diet. Parasecoli elucidates how the last half century has seen new packaging, conservation techniques, industrial mass production, and more sophisticated systems of transportation and distribution, bringing about profound changes in how the country’s population thought about food. He also reveals that much of Italy’s culinary reputation hinged on the world’s discovery of it as a healthy eating model, which has led to the prevalence of high-end Italian restaurants in major cities around the globe. Including historical recipes for delicious Italian dishes to enjoy alongside a glass of crisp Chianti, Al Dente is a fascinating survey of this country’s cuisine that sheds new light on why we should always leave the gun and take the cannoli.

From Italy’s farm country to your table, Vittorio Assaf and Fabio Granato share secrets of regional Italian food in this mouthwatering collection of modern takes on traditional dishes. Serafina was conceived while Vittorio Assaf and Fabio Granato were lost at sea in a small sailboat. Managing violent weather and severe hunger, the two stranded friends vowed to open a restaurant serving the best pasta and pizza in the world if they were to survive their ordeal. In 1995, they fulfilled their promise by launching the highly acclaimed Serafina in New York City. Following its success, they have gone on to open restaurants around the world from Dubai to Japan. In Serafina, the cookbook, easy-to-follow steps bring to the table centuries of regional culinary history and local traditions, including knowledge that generations of farmers, fishermen, tomato growers, orchard planters, olive oil millers, bread bakers, and wine makers have devoted to their craft. Italian cooking centers on the appreciation of quality ingredients from both land and sea. Farm to table is the central tenet of Italian cooking and this translates to simple and immensely rewarding dishes. This is what Vittorio and Fabio have embraced with passion and joy. With more than 100 delicious takes on traditional recipes, this lavishly illustrated book is a must-have for home cooks interested in modern Italian recipes and curious to delve deeper into regional cuisine.

Top Chef fan favorite Fabio Viviani, along with partner Jacopo Falleni, shares the original Tuscan food and drink recipes behind his award-winning restaurant in this full-color cookbook.

Making pizza is easy, even making "good" pizza is easy. But there are many elements, many little things you could - and should - know about. Once you understand them all, you can really go to the next level and surprise your friends by giving them something that not even some "real" pizzerias would be able to offer.We're talking about fundamentals here: you can't run if you don't learn to walk first. It wouldn't make too much sense to learn about pre-ferments, high hydration, advanced kneading techniques and blah blah, before knowing the basics that really matter.This book will let you enter in a pizzeria and learn many tips and tricks used by professionals, so you can bring them to your kitchen. You will also see debunked the most common recipes you find on the web, because the truth is not always out there.It is said that the devil is in the details, and this is true for pizza making too.

This book is a novel and original collection of essays on Italians and food. Food culture is central both to the way Italians perceive their national identity and to the consolidation of Italianicity in global context. More broadly, being so heavily symbolically charged, Italian foodways are an excellent vantage point from which to explore consumption and identity in the context of the commodity chain, and the global/local dialectic. The contributions from distinguished experts cover a range of topics including food and consumer practices in Italy, cultural intermediators and foodstuff narratives, traditions of production and regional variation in Italian foodways, and representation of Italianicity through food in old and new media. Although rooted in sociology, Italians and Food draws on literature from history, anthropology, semiotics and media studies, and will be of great interest to students and scholars of food studies, consumer culture, cultural sociology, and contemporary Italian studies.

Churchill is well-known for his hearty appetite and love of food. This book gives a fascinating insight into what he ate during the Second World War, containing over 250 delicious recipes created by his personal cook, Georgina Landemare. From mouthwatering cakes, biscuits and puddings, to healthy salads and warming soups, it revives some forgotten British classics and traditional French fare. Including timeless recipes still popular today (coq au vin, potato salad, and chocolate cake) as well as some more unusual concoctions (Cervelles Connaught, or ‘curried brains’), it reveals the food that sustained Churchill during his ‘finest hour.’

Daisy Martinez is America's most exciting and beloved new television cook. Here, at last, is her first cookbook, with all the recipes from her acclaimed show--and most can be made in under thirty minutes! In Daisy Martinez's kitchen, salsa music is always playing. Laughter fills the air, along with delicious aromas of the amazing meal to come. Friends, neighbors, and family members are ever-present, sneaking tastes from every pot. And in the center of it all, Daisy is laughing, singing, tasting, and appreciating everything that her kitchen--and life!--has to offer. Does this sound like your kitchen? If not, don't despair. In this book and on her acclaimed national public television series, Daisy Cooks!, Daisy teaches you how to bring excitement back to the table with Latin-inspired food that your friends and family will love! Some of these recipes will remind you of meals you've enjoyed in restaurants. Some are great variations on dishes you already cook. Some are totally new. All of them will rock your world. Daisy's flavorful, satisfying interpretation of the best dishes from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Spain, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Central and South America all taste like the results of a day in the kitchen--but in reality, most take only thirty minutes to prepare. Here, you'll find the techniques that Daisy learned at the French Culinary Institute, along with her mother's and grandmother's time-tested tricks! This winning combination results in dishes that range from elegant Chicken Braised with Figs to soul-satisfying Cuban Black Bean Soup to to-die-for homemade Dulce de Leche. And then, of course, there are Daisy's "Top Ten Hits"--the recipes that, once you try them, are guaranteed to change the way you cook forever. In this first chapter, Daisy shows how simple flavor boosters, in addition to a few easy techniques, can make every meal mouthwateringly special. In Daisy's words, "If you can season, cook, and dress pork chops and serve them alongside fragrant yellow rice in less than thirty minutes, I can't imagine why you'd eat anything from a cardboard carton!" With ingredients that are found in almost every supermarket, equipment that every kitchen contains, and a little bit of adventurousness on your part, the recipes in this book will transform your mealtimes for good. So jump right in--it's time to get Daisy-fied!

New love. Exotic destinations. A once-in-a-lifetime adventure. What could go wrong? City girl Torre DeRoche isn't looking for love, but a chance encounter in a San Francisco bar sparks an instant connection with a soulful Argentinean man who unexpectedly sweeps her off her feet. The problem? He's just about to cast the dock lines and voyage around the world on his small sailboat, and Torre is terrified of deep water. However, lovesick Torre determines that to keep the man of her dreams, she must embark on the voyage of her nightmares, so she waves good-bye to dry land and braces for a life-changing journey that's as exhilarating as it is terrifying. Somewhere mid-Pacific, she finds herself battling to keep the old boat, the new relationship, and her floundering sanity afloat. . . . This sometimes hilarious, often harrowing, and always poignant memoir is set against a backdrop of the world's most beautiful and remote destinations. Equal parts love story and travel memoir, Love with a Chance of Drowning is witty, charming, and proof positive that there are some risks worth taking.