What a cookbook! Finally a cookbook packed with the best and most delicious Italian-American recipes you could find anywhere. I was asked to cater a birthday party for a 79-year old Italian woman so I decided to use Lidia's recipes. Every single dish came out absolutely tasty and beautiful...even better than what you usually order at a neighborhood Italian-American restaurant in the Northeast. The meatballs were better than my Sicilian grandmother's legendary meatballs! Everyone raved about the meat raviolis which I served in a grated parmigiano-butter sauce. Numerous raviolis broke apart in the boiling water so I'm not sure what I did was wrong. Maybe I should roll out the pasta dough a bit thicker the next time. I was never a fan of caponata (eggplant appetizer) until I tried Lidia's recipe. It was the best I've ever tasted. I love fried peppers so I used the recipe from the book. They turned out a bit bitter from an abundance of browned garlic. Next time, I will omit the garlic. I think the peppers taste great on their own whether they are roasted or fried. I wish most Italian restaurants in American would use Lidia's recipes for tomato sauces which taste very fresh. The book is heavy and thick... comes with beautiful photos. It's filled with warmth...almost like a grandmother's personal recipe book that she refuses to share with anyone. It's one of the most beautifully designed cookbooks I've seen in ages. Mangia!

A friend of mine gave me this cookbook with the caveat that I make dinner the next weekend based on it. Since everyone hangs around while I cook, I made one long cooking time dish as an appetizer for the vultures to eat while I put together the rest of the meal.

I made 4 dishes from the book. The first one was the pork spareribs with honey vinegar glaze. That was the dish I made for the pre-dinner nibbles. Excellent. When everyone first tried it there was that silence one only hears where the only sound is everyone chewing and all conversation has stopped.

The shrimp pieces in a scampi sauce over toasted bread was the formal appetizer. Everyone said, I should have made it the dinner with some pasta and were disappointed that there weren't any extras. Raves all around. The sauce is the scampi sauce that you wish you would get when you go out to the local Italian place, not too much garlic, not too much lemon and a unbroken butter sauce wtih chives. Very easy to make.

Scallopine Piccatta (chicken for those who would not eat the veal dish below). Again, a full bodied bright lemon-butter flavor without the garlic and chive notes of the scampi. Excellent egg flavor batter, you actually appear to poach the meat in the fat. It was enjoyed by everyone. Very easy to make.

Scallopine Saltimboca (veal) An delightful presentation of veal with proscuitto and whole sage leaves in a white wine, and stock sauce mounted with butter. No leftovers to be had, great contrasts in flavors. Lidia gives a wonderful technique to attach the proscuitto and sage leaves to the scallopine. I was able to not use toothpicks to hold the 'sandwich' together when I put the sage leaves under the proscuitto (as suggested). I think however, that one or two sage leaves would need to be added to the sauce to give it the same taste as when the sage is on top of the proscuitto.

4 recipes and 4 hits. Yes, I know that 3 are similar dishes, I don't have an cooking assistant and wanted to limit the ingredients and cooking times. My only caution are the following things. My friends' stove is not commercial grade or even very high BTU, 7,000 I think on what her burners describe as 'high-speed.' Lidia's instructions also require that any stocks to be added to a dish be at temperature, that is at least at a simmer or low boil which most people do not do (just open that can of Swanson or College Inn, I believe). I found that if you don't at the least have the stock at temperature, you can not finish the dishes in the times quoted in the book. The sauces are full of flavor, but you are reducing CUPS of stock and wine. The sauces will simply not reduce to the right thickness in a few minutes unless you get the time savings from the heated stock (and get yourself a ladle that measures a 1/2 cup as an aid). Luckily the meats were sitting on the side (after being sauted) while the sauces were reducing so no big deal. The shrimp dish was almost overcooked because the sauce didn't reduce fast enough (I was forced to remove the shrimp to let the sauce reduce and then add them back in). First glance at some of the recipes appear to have a lot of fat, such as in the scallopine dishes, the saute of the meat is in a lot of fat, but that is tossed out to make the sauces which have less with 4-6 tablespoons of butter divided among the 6-8 servings that most of the recipes are setup for; perfect for a gathering or a large family.

If you have ever seen the PBS TV series that goes with this book, you will know most of the additional storyline and dialog included, a very good read with excellent tasty recipes.

The Penne alla Vodka recipe is worth the price of this book alone! Absolutely Fabulous! I have tried many other recipes in this book and every one of them is delicious. This is the best Italian cookbook I own!

I first encountered Lidia Bastianich through the public television program, "New York, The Great Chefs." Ms. Bastianich made Grapes in Grappa. I had never heard of grappa but I knew I wanted to copy that recipe and so I bought the companion book for the series. Many years later, La Cucina di Lidia crossed my hands and I'm glad it did. And not just for the recipes, which are superb. Lidia and I are the same age. While I grew up is a working class suburb in the American Midwest,with its small lots ringed by chainlink fence, Lidia grew up in a country still scarred by WWII. We were not wealthy -- my father, who never went to high school, was a skilled laborer -- but we never had the sort of struggle to put food on the table that Lidia's family had. That struggle and the story of her families immigration is told in this cookbook. And, yes, it is a cookbook, but it is just as interesting as a document of perhaps the "other side" of the Baby Boom generation that has been soundly criticised for materialism and self-indulgence. From generations of Istrian cooks, Lidia learned how to feed a family suberbly. To my Irish and Polish family, the Italian dishes that were making their way into the Midwest in the 1950s were exotic. I remember my mother buying the "spaghetti kit," (can I mention the brand - Chef Boyardee) a yellow, rectangular box in which there was a long, thin box of dry spaghetti, a medium size can of tomato sauce and a small can of grated cheese. When there were only 2 children in the family, we were fed from one box, but as the children grew in size and increased in number, so did the number of boxes it took to feed the family. It was with considerable trepidation that my mother bought her first pound of dry pasta and cans of whole tomatoes and tomato paste and made her first "Italian" dinner from scratch. More than red sauce, this is a wonderful book that captures an era and an area. By the way, Lidia also answers the question of dry v. "fresh" pasta. A great book.

A book close to my heart. My family hails from the island of Krk just south of Istria. As a first generation American I am fortunate to have the flavorings of the Adriatic in my soul and palate. This book literally brought tears to my eyes. My family will have hours of enjoyment from this book. As a fellow child of Astoria,Queens---HVALA LIDIA!!!