De Laurentiis - Everyday Italian: 125 Simple and Delicious Recipes

You might think that all television chefs are tight friendsthat on any given night, you can find us sharing tables in four-star restaurants, indulging in six-course tasting menus with matching wines, hobnobbing with movie stars, and riding around in limousines. Or that maybe theres some sort of TV-chef club somewhere, where we meet weekly to talk about things like knives and handmade pasta. Or that were always traveling around, hanging out in one anothers kitchens, or on each others sets, gossiping.

Not true.

I first met Giada De Laurentiis, like most of America did, by seeing her television show, Everyday Italian. I love the idea of watching Food Network, but in reality I rarely have time to sit back and enjoy it. Plus Im a professional high-velocity channel surfer, and its toughreally toughfor a show to hold my attention for more than a few seconds before I move on to some golf or MTV Cribs. But I always give Food Network a try. And one day, there was Giada, whom Id seen doing some promotional stuff, but Id never watched her show. She was talking about her family and antipasti, and I stuck around to see what she was about.

The first thing I noticed was that everything on the screen was beautifulboth the host and the food, which looked delicious and real and natural. Then I noticed that she really knew what she was talking about. And I realized that despite her movie-star looks, Giada isnt on television because shes merely attractive; shes a real Italian girl who can cook. I was hooked.

A few months later, I found out that Giada and I shared a friend at Food Network, and the three of us decided to make a special togetherwith me and Giada as cohosts. Thats when I finally met her. It turns out that Giada is smart, Italian-speaking, and family-orientedthe three qualities my grandma hoped Id find in a girl to marry. (Too late for that.) Shes also a great cook, highly knowledgeable about food, and a huge amount of fun to be aroundthe three qualities Id hope to find in a television partner.

And so heres her first booklike my first, about simple Italian food. Simplicity is bandied about by nearly every cookbook author under the sun, often to dubious effect. But simplicity is truly present here in Everyday Italian. Most of the recipes dont require more than a half-dozen ingredients or a half-page of notes, yet they still seem to cover everything I want to eat, with a determined focus to allow simple flavors to shine and an equally determined effort to get them on the table quickly (instead of spending half a day looking for ingredients, which I often have to do even when Im cooking out of my own books). The setup of Everyday Italian is marvelous and easy to access, so I can find what Im looking for without having to resort to combing through the index. And the whole book is suffused with Giadas approachable, friendly personality; not only do I want to cook the recipes in this book, I want to cook them with the author. Thats what I love about a good cookbook.

Giada and I have two very separate and individual styles of Italian cooking. But both stem from a love of the same culture, the same tables, the same exquisite meals in historic spots, the same appreciation for everything that is Italian and part of our nervous system. We have approached this love, this food, this life, this passionthis everythingfrom opposite sides of the same coin. Her food isnt there to be made by an angry techno chef, or even someone too hung up on exactly the right thing or the new combination. Giada isnt out to impress anyone with her expertise on esoteric ingredients or her wildly inventive new flavor combinations. Her cooking is part of the twenty-first-century Italian world citizennot a throwback to the days of handmade pasta and daylong-simmered stews. But this is still the food of grandmas and aunts and brothers and cousins and sisters and in-laws, the cooking of the real Italy, Giadas cooking, my cooking, everyones cooking this is truly the cooking of the Italian family. And this book is for everybody who wants to feed that family, every day, with great Italian food.