Vegetariano: 400 Regional Italian Recipes Hardcover – 6 Mar. 2018

This book, 'Vegetariano: 400 Regional Italian Recipes' was a present for my 71st birthday in May 2018.I have been a vegetarian for 45 years; I can’t remember the taste of chicken, beef or steak. After I retired, two events happened in my life. I began to learn to cook and we went on holiday in Italy. The result of these two events has enabled me to become a fairly proficient cook of Italian vegetarian meals (so my wife thinks, anyway). This book fits perfectly into my cook’s library and will advance my knowledge of Italian regional cuisine.The book was first published in Italy in 2015 and in the USA in 2018. The books qualities that impress me include the massive 400 vegetarian recipes, it’s compiled by the Slow Food movement in Italy and recipes are grouped by Italian regions and arranged by course e.g. soups, salads, pasta etc.My cooking recipe list from the book for next week includes: Panzanella p.60, Pasta allo scarpariello p.101, Verdure ammollicate p. 358.In my opinion this book places Italian vegetarian regional cuisine side by side with Italy’s impressive history, culture, art and architecture. I recommend this book to vegetarians and meat-eaters and lovers of Italy, Italians and Italian cooking.And now for the small print. No book is perfect, anyway it’s not a perfect world, is it? But perhaps, on re-printing these features of the book could be changed.The contents page doesn’t give the page numbers.More photographs pleaseA conversion from USA measurements to metricAnd finally – cheese. As far as I can see the author does not discuss the issue of using non-vegetarian cheese in the recipes. Parmesan and other cheeses used in the recipes are not vegetarian. They are made with an enzyme known as rennet which is derived from the stomach lining of (obviously dead) unweaned young animals. Frustratingly, many (most as far as I can see) cookery writers step away from this issue and hope it doesn’t matter to vegetarians, an exception is Ursula Ferrigno. It’s time that cookery writers stood up to their publishers when they pressure them to avoid stating ‘vegetarians cheese’ in their recipes. However, if you buy the book it is your decision whether you use the cheese as included in the recipe or use an alternative vegetarian cheese. In the UK there are good alternative options. The British Cheese Board states: “Nowadays nearly all British cheese is suitable for vegetarians because it is made using a non-animal renneting agent.” Also, vegetarian Pecorino cheese is available in a well-known UK supermarket beginning with the letter T.

Love this book, very tasty vegetarian recipes, easy to follow and cook. Use this nearly everyday and enjoying vegetarian Italian food so much!

Lovely book, authentic Italian recipes, well laid out. i have tried a few recipes and they turned out well. i only give this book 4 stars because of the index. The index has the recipes by region, only. This means that when I want to go and find the recipe for the stuffed potato dumplings, I will need to have memorised the fact that they come from the Friuli Venezia Giulia region. The index also lists tgem as 'stuffed potato dumplings' so I need to read the entire listing under Friuli Venezia Giulia as they are not under potato or dumplings. I had some aubergines in my kitchen and was looking for a recipe. I did not know whether they woukd be under aubergines, eggplants or brinjals and under which region to look. It was an unnecessary nightmare. This laziness from the publishers detracts from the book because finding a recipe could take you 20 minutes as you have to read through all of the recipes to find the one you want. There is no excuse for not having a proper index alongside the regional one. In the digital age, creating an index would take only a few minutes but would save your readers hours of torture!

Potentially a great cook book however the recipes use a mix of cups and old imperial weights. Some great recipes, very few photos although what there are are great. Also some very regionally based ingredients so unless you live somewhere with a great deli nearby you may struggle to find these particular ingredients.

I'm italian, and I am so glad to have found a proper authentic italian book to buy to my English friends! Very rare on these days..

Real Italian cooking- authentic , delicious and easy to make. Vegetarian recipes with an Italian twist are quite original.

I am in love with this book. It is such a fantastic compilation of both familiar and unusual dishes from all of the regions of Italy. The recipes are clear and easy to follow. It may be difficult to obtain some of the ingredients outside of Italy, but I’m sure substitutions could be made where necessary. Slow Food is a fantastic organization and their mission is clear on every page of this book. It does a fantastic job of introducing you to the incredibly varied vegetarian cuisine that Italy has to offer. Can’t wait to explore it further.

Great book, super yummy recipes. A very complete variety of dishes, with ingredients easy to find.I wish it had more pictures.

I wish there were more photos. Also, I did not know what many ingredients were and I'm Italian, so. Otherwise, I recommend it.

A fascinating book, but be warned that it is clearly not wrottem for the beginner cook. The biggest drawback is that the book was translated from Italian without any supplemental material that would help people elsewhere use it easily. In particular, the recipes often call for specific local vegetables, plants, herbs, and cheeses that would be difficult or impossible to obtain outside of Italy. A description of these ingredients and recommended substitutions would greatly help the foreign reader and cook! An experienced cook can read the recipes and adapt most of them to work with ingredients available to them, but a substitution list would make it much easier. My other quibble is with the index, which is arranged by Italian regions, rather than alphabetically by name of the recipe or the ingredient. If your Italian geography isn't brilliant and you don't know or can't remember where a certain dish comes from, this form of indexing makes a user work awfully hard to find it!