The short version: Even if you only rarely cook at home, you need to buy this cookbook. It’s out of print but there are a few cheap copies left on the secondary market through Amazon so you might be able to get one if you hurry.
The longer explanation: One of the sub-tasks in my Well Stocked Pantry project has been to identify the top 30 or so cookbooks in the world, as regarded by real people and tested in the real world. Boxes of tomes have been delivered to my home for the past week, and I have been working my way through many of them, ranging from topics as varied as sauces to chocolate making.
[mainbodyad]Last night, I had some fresh cream that had been opened and needed to be used, so I decided to make my grandmother dinner and bring it to her. I reached for one of the books, the Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan and found a recipe for Sausages and Cream Sauce. I grabbed a copper sauce pan, put it over the flame, and began cooking. In roughly ten minutes, this simple, no-frills recipe had yielded a result that, were it offered in an Italian restaurant, I would have returned as a regular to enjoy.
Now, you know we love Italian food. There is nothing quite like a good pasta dish. The sauces; the flavors; it’s magic when it all comes together. Hazan’s reputation is deserved. I was so intrigued by the book living up to its reputation that I am now testing out many of the other dishes in it. Time and time again, the food is amazing, proving, in many cases, there really is wisdom in crowds.
These recipes are so simple, which adds to the magic. They are almost impossible to screw up if you can follow basic instructions. The steps involved are far fewer than many of the other recipes I’ve talked about over the years, such as the delicious corn chowder. You could be a full time working parent and still produce the type of food people rave about by simply having a few basic ingredients on hand to simmer a sauce after you come home from the office.
Here are photographs to show you how straightforward and nearly effortless the sausages and cream sauce was from the book.
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking Cookbook – It’s been out of print for more than twenty years but a few cheap copies still exist on the secondary market that you can get to fairly quickly if you hurry up and buy before the inventory is depleted.
Italian Sausages and Cream Sauce Recipe – This is the first, basic, simple sauce I tried from the book. It was magnificent.
Butter, Onions, and Oil in Pan for Sausage and Cream Sauce
Adding Sausage to Sausage and Cream Sauce
Sausage and Cream Sauce for Italian Pasta
Happy eating!
Interesting side note: This book, published in 1992, was an adaptation of one of the author’s earlier works from 1978 by a slightly different name. Some insist the earlier version is superior. Many say there is no difference. I bought both copies but have not gathered enough evidence to have an opinion. Regardless of how how those tests turn out, it is clear this is one of the best, basic Italian cookbooks I’ve ever come across. If I had to build a core collection with only ten books in it, it would be in there.
Update: I published pictures of another walkthrough from this cookbook; a tomato sauce with onion and butter, which we served over penne pasta.
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Reader Comments (8)
Comments are presented chronologically, with replies indented beneath the comments to which they respond.
Jason Spacek
January 18, 2013
Nom nom nom
Anon
January 19, 2013
The book you recommended has tons of 5-star reviews. Looks like a great recommendation. Unfortunately (for me?), I do not buy cook books without pictures.
Joshua Kennon
January 19, 2013
Replying to Anon
Printing technology made it too expensive to print photographs up until relatively recently so you're missing out on probably 95% of the greatest recipes that have ever been developed since the copyright holders have passed away and their work is now considered too important to alter. Maybe someday they will produce a photographic version of Julia Child's famous French tome or James Beard's famous American Cookery, for example, but it hasn't happened, yet. Whomever attempted it, after gaining permission from the owner, would be walking into a minefield.
It can be an adjustment but after a few months of occasionally cooking out of them, you get to the point you can see the recipe in your head by reading the description. If the reviews are out-of-this-world, it's worth the step of faith.
You can also see if people have made it on YouTube if you really want to see it before you decide whether it is worth the effort.
Anon
January 20, 2013
Replying to Joshua Kennon
This is great information! Thank you!
Michael Starke
January 24, 2013
My copy just arrived yesterday and was waiting for me when I got home last night. I haven't had a chance to open it up yet, but I plan on sitting down with it tonight. I'll probably pick out one or two things that I'd like to try, and pick up the ingredients when I'm doing our weekly shopping at the market on Saturday. If I find a gem, I'll share my experience back to the community.
I usually don't buy things without first looking into them more closely for myself, but a recommendation from Joshua is a rather ringing endorsement. Hopefully I'll find a few things to integrate into our household cookbook.
Joshua Kennon
January 25, 2013
Replying to Michael Starke
Please do share if you come across anything you think worth mentioning!
I just published another picture walkthrough of one of the recipes in this cookbook, this time a tomato sauce with onion and butter, which we put on a penne pasta. It was very good - subtle compared to a lot of other sauces but that has an appeal, especially as part of a repertoire so you can make different sauces and different types depending on the occasion and preferences of the friends and family at your table. For us, it is a perfect contrast to the pepper-infused sausage tomato sauce we normally use; two ends of an extreme.
A huge advantage of that book is that it is also a textbook. The recipes are only half of the story. Her explanation of cooking processes, the building blocks of flavor (the three methods used to infuse taste into a dish, for example), and suggested menu pairings are invaluable.
Michael Starke
January 28, 2013
Replying to Joshua Kennon
The spouse actually ran across the sausage and cream sauce independently, and flagged it. When I saw the post-it, I brought up the site and the pictures. It was a "done deal" at that point, and sausage was added to the shopping list.
I executed a doubling of the recipe, and I was rather pleased. I had two minor quibbles with the recipe, and one was largely due to my error in the purchase of ingredients. Firstly, because I chose the sausage poorly, and ended up with one with a rather high fat content, that left a bit of a "sheen" to the sauce for the excess that didn't integrate with the liquid ingredients. Secondly, I think that in future executions, I will increase the amounts of the liquid ingredients in the recipe, as the "sauce" part of the sauce did not seem to go very far.
Ease of Preparation: 10/10
Taste: 8/10
Value: 9/10
Overall: 8/10
It's not my favorite pasta dish, (I was crossing my fingers, because I love loose-sausage, and tend to prefer cream-based sauces) but it's a solid performer. The biggest win is how quickly it comes together (I think from the time I opened the refrigerator to retrieve the ingredients, to plating, was less than 20 minutes). It has good "value," providing me with a stomach that was full for quite some time (and a noticeably reduced need to snack) for around $1.25 per serving.
The pasta e fagioli was also flagged with a post-it, and ingredients obtained from the market. That's the next up for us, either tonight or tomorrow night.
Joshua Kennon
January 28, 2013
Replying to Michael Starke
Awesome comment review! Thank you so much for sharing this!