Venice: Four Seasons of Home Cooking Reviewed by Ruth Paget
Chef Russell Norman, who wrote Venice: Four Seasons of Home Cooking lived in Venice, Italy for 14 months collecting material for this travel memoir cookbook, owns the Polpo Restaurant in London, England and is the author of the Polpo cookbook as well.
I enjoyed reading about his daily visits to Venetian markets for fish and/or seafood and produce and dashing home to prepare his treasures for lunch.
He covers the changing market fare through the seasons, but I like 5 of his autumn recipes best, because they can easily be made with agricultural products from Monterey County California.
These recipes include:
-Autumn Celery Salad
This salad is made with chopped and mixed shallots, celery stalks with their leaves, fennel bulbs, and comice pear with a dressing made of lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese on top.
-Roasted Red Chicogy
This recipe calls for splitting red chicory in half and brushing it with olive oil before roasting it and seasoning it with salt, pepper, and Parmesan cheese.
-Tuna, Radicchio, and Horseradish Crostini This bracing hors d’oeuvres is a toasted slice of bread with a chopped mixture of radicchio and tuna held together with creamy horseradish on top.
-Gnocchi with Sage and Butter
Gnocchi are what I call dumpling pasta made with flour and egg and boiled. The gnocchi are flavored with a sauce of sautéed sage and butter.
-Grilled Polenta with Wild Mushrooms and Garlic
This recipe calls for grilled cooked polenta bars as an ingredient. It takes about an hour to make polenta from scratch before it can cool down into bars for grilling, so be forewarned about the time to make this recipe.
Once you have made the grilled polenta bars, this recipe is a cinch to make. The mushrooms are sautéed in olive oil with garlic with chopped parsley added at the end and then placed over the polenta bars for serving.
Readers who like travel memoirs and cooking will find much to like in Venice: Four Seasons of Home Cooking by Norman Russell. This book also interested me in dining at his Venetian-themed Polpo Restaurant in London, England.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
