La Dolce Vita Cookbook

I bought David Rocco's "Dolce Vita" and I ended up smiling because it's obvious this man is as much in love with Italian cooking as he is with his beautiful wife and italy itself. What a gorgeous, hedonistic cookbook that's in love with life itself. At times it is part-journal, part-memoir, part-cookbook. It's recipies are painted through-out, transfered overtop of the exqusite photographs that spill double, page for page. My brother is coveting my copy already, I think i'll have to hide it or buy him one before he steals mine. It's the kind of book you can't stop picking up and flipping thru. You can see, feel, taste, and know Italy and the author's Italian blood coursing thru his veins when you read it. It's not only a great italian cookbook but it's a happy book. It's a joy to discover it's more than a book. You experience Italy when you linger thru it, and it in-turn, makes you want to discover more of it's secrets by cooking the recipes and smiling -- just like David does. His yummie meat sauce, a "Salsa Bolgonese" is divine:- it's the all-day-simmered beef/pork reduced meat sauce for his lasagna dish. The picture of the lasagna alone gives me a coronary every time I gaze in awe upon it. It's melting Italian perfection. I love his variations on the basic stock recipies; the stories of his mom's cooking; the starters, main courses, soups, desserts, a few cocktails -- not to mention the Filetto Di Manzo Al Balsamico (beef tenderloin with carmalized onion and balsamic reduction so rich and simple it's worth the book alone.) I just love the pre-ambles he has for each chapter and the ones attached to each recipe. I love a dish to have a story or a purpose for being. All of David's do. Anyone looking for athentic-in-philosophy-or-recipe Italian cooking will be continually pleased with this very humbly-charming and uplifting book. Welcome to Italy, David's style.

If you love the TV series, this cookbook is a nice extension. Not all the same recipes that are on the show, there are so many more. I love the photos; I look at the photos and feel that I am transported to Italy. So many recipes have been marked and tried. It is all about "Quanto Basta" I know it will be referenced many times to come.