Venetian da Fiore Cookbook Reviewed by Ruth Paget
The da Fiore Cookbook: Recipes from Venice’s Best Restaurant by Damiano Martin has several recipes that are doable at home that could be served on the weekend or for a lunch with a Venetian Carnival theme or for a New Year’s Bal Masqué (Masked Ball).
The recipes that I thought looked delicious and easy to prepare for a weekend lunch or party follow:
*da Fiore Steamed Mussels made with garlic cloves sautéed in olive oil with chopped plum tomatoes, brandy, chopped basil leaves, chopped parsley, and salt and pepper -gratin of taglioni pasta with radicchio and shrimp
-taglioni is a pasta that is thinner than spaghetti and made from eggs. Radicchio is a favorite lettuce-like vegetable in Venice that has a ball-like shape and red-purple leaves. Radicchio is bitter raw, but mellows with cooking, especially if mixed with Parmesan -
In this baked recipe, da Fiore calls for braising the radicchio and shrimp in butter with onion, white wine, and cream as a sauce. -boiled taglioni is placed in a baking dish with the sauce mixed in and Parmesan on top before heating.
-this long description shows how much I love gratins!
*pennette with sea scallops ad broccoli florets -In this dish, boiled broccoli is mixed with sautéed scallops to go with small tubular pasta cut on the diagonal and topped with Parmesan
*spaghetti served with clams in a tomato-white wine sauce
*whole wheat pasta (bigoli) with salsa made of sardines, white wine, extra virgin olive oil, and onions
Finally, a dish I would leave to a personal chef or restaurant to prepare is pumpkin gnocchi with Parmesan, sage, and white truffles from Italy. (This dish just calls for extra dabs of butter.)
Fish and seafood lovers as well as home gardeners will find many recipes of interest in The da Fiore Cookbook about Venetian cuisine in Italy by Damiano Martin. This cookbook also has dramatic, skyward photos of Venice that make it a nice coffee table book.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
