Tag Archives: book

Our Italian Library – Silver Spoon Pasta

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PASTA. Noodles. Spaghetti. It is often one of the simplest meals you can make. On weeknights we often find ourselves tucking into a bowl of the comfort food, as it is fast and delicious.

But the world of pasta is a very big world. In Italy, each region, sometimes each town, has it’s own specialties.  Pasta that is served nightly on tables in Naples will never see the light of day in Milan.

Each pasta shape was created to pair with a certain sauce. Once you start learning how to properly prepare pasta, your world can change.

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Where is where The Silver Spoon Pasta, from the powerhouse publishers Phaidon, comes in handy. An encyclopedia of knowledge about this product can be found in its pages. With beautiful photography and recipes from basic to gourmet, it is the definitive source on pasta varieties and recipes.

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We like to play “pasta roulette” with this book. Randomly open a page, and BAM – make that for dinner. There are 360 recipes, so you only need to find none-pasta meals for five days a year. You can pick up a pasta starter kit at Via Umbria, and then get cracking in the kitchen.

A tavola!

– Via Umbria

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PASTA. Noodles. Spaghetti. It is often one of the simplest meals you can make. On weeknights we often find ourselves tucking into ...

Our Italian Library – Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef

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Sometimes, on slower days at Via Umbria, we wander to our Italian book shelf and flip lovingly through the many wonderful cookbooks we have in store.

It is always validating to have a book we have fallen in love with get recognized by the food and publishing community.

Which brings us to the Art of Eating Prize, which was awarded last week. The Art of Eating Prize was established in 2014 and is awarded annually to the author of the year’s best book about food.

The six books of the 2015 Art of Eating Prize Shortlist represent a range of outstanding food writing. From the daunting pile of 84 nominations, the judges produced first a long list of 12 books and then a shortlist of six. We were thrilled that one of our favorite new Italian cookbooks made that minimal list.

The three-Michelin-star awarded chef Massimo Bottura in presents the stories behind four dozen of his dishes in Never Trust A Skinny Italian Chef. Though this book looks quite serious, his interview and tasting menu on Jimmy Kimmel Live proves him to be a man of humor as well.

This tome is a tribute to Bottura’s twenty-five year career and the evolution of Osteria Francescana. Divided into four chapters, each one dealing with a different period, the book features 50 recipes and accompanying texts explaining Bottura’s inspiration, ingredients and techniques. Substantial enough to be a serious work of food literature, yet stimulating (and large) enough to be a coffee table book, this recognition is well deserved.

 

— Via Umbria 

Sometimes, on slower days at Via Umbria, we wander to our Italian book shelf and flip lovingly through the many wonderful cookbooks ...

Noteworthy Notizie – March 6th

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FRIDAY, MARCH 6th

We hope this Friday finds you safe, warm, and excited for the weekend. Hopefully you are beside a pool (this image is from La Fattoria del Gelso in Umbria), but if you find yourself snowed in, we hope you have a relaxing and toasty weekend. Here’s what we have been reading at Via Umbria this week from around the web — grab some espresso and take a look.

 

 

So you think we are having bad weather in the Northeast? A dramatic helicopter rescue happened in the Italian Dolomites as 200 skiers were stranded when high winds blew a tree onto a cable car line.

 

An important new book on what makes Italy, Italy, got a delightful review by the New York Times. We can’t wait to crack it open.

 

Here are 20 things you have been doing wrong when cooking Italian food, and why and how to fix them.

 

Olive oil fraud is nothing new, but a class action suit to protect the purity of the labels is something to watch. At Via Umbria, we personally meet our suppliers, mostly tiny farms, to ensure that our oil is top quality, and not the fake stuff. Stock up on our trustworthy and tasty favorites online or in store. .

 

It’s not exaclty Umbria, but this New York Times Travel video of 36 hours in Rome has us craving la dolce vita.

 

Happy Weekend!

–Via Umbria

FRIDAY, MARCH 6th We hope this Friday finds you safe, warm, and excited for the weekend. Hopefully you are beside a pool (this ...

Our Italian Library – Ciao Biscotti

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Join us with this new blog series, Our Italian Library, as we read and collect the best books about Italy on our shelves!

 

When you are lucky enough to get your hands on an advance copy of a biscotti cookbook, there is nothing to do but push aside all other work, get yourself an authentic Italian biscotti, and some Venetian coffee, and read.

Today marks the release of the new book “Ciao Biscotti” by Domenica Marchietti, a delightful cookbook chronicling Italy’s favorite cookie. We loved Maerchietti’s previous cookbook, Rustic Italian, which we stock in our Georgetown store. We were curious to see what this book contained in its pages!

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Delivering up a myriad of flavors, this book leaves no biscotti stone unturned. While suggesting the normal combinations of chocolate, citrus, and nuts, she also ventures into the savory biscotti territory, with unexpected flavors like Sun Dried Tomato and Fennel, and Mountain Gorgonzola and Walnut. Who knows if they will hold up once we make them, but they look pretty dang good on the page!

She also includes drinking pairings, from specific wines to lattes to inventive coffee liquor drinks.  Which makes us wonder…could we go through an entire day eating and drinking nothing but biscotti and their liquid compliments?…

Stop by the store and get your hands on this adorable, brand new book! Or, if your not the baking type, then come by and pick up a bag of one of our dozens of types of biscotti, which we’ll gladly crack open with you over a cup of coffee.

 

— Via Umbria

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  Join us with this new blog series, Our Italian Library, as we read and collect the best books about Italy on our shelves!   When ...