Bonita's Reviews
Cookbook Reviews
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
By Marcella Hazan
Knopf - 1992
http://fourcooksonebook.blogspot.ca/2014_01_01_archive.html
Perhaps the recipes themselves fall victim to 'tradition'. Perhaps because there was a limited availability of ingredients available to cooks in Italy when these traditional recipes were evolving, so many repeat themselves over and over, which contributed to our perception of overall dullness in the book. Tomatoes, potatoes, onions, celery, carrots, porcini mushrooms, meat broth, and parmasean cheese seemed to be required in so many recipes.
We all felt weighed down by cooking this way consistently for 3 months (our standard testing period for each book we review). This cookbook is a treatise on classic Italian cooking. With that in mind, it should be viewed as a bit of history lesson, a trip to the museum. It's not an everyday cookbook!