BOOK REVIEW
The Art of Italian Cooking
By Maria Lo Pinto
(Doubleday & Co.)

This book came out in 1948, back when the author's grandmother "Nonni" practiced her culinary arts in an authentic Italian cucina. And by authentic, I mean with no running water -- and the only drain being a small cement hole in the floor.

No, Maria Lo Pinto's family members were not impoverished Sicilians yearning for a no-expense-paid getaway to the New World -- it's just that her "Nonni" did not have need for all these "modern conveniences;" all she had was everything necessary to create delicious food.

So if you don't even need a kitchen sink to make fantastic Italian cuisine, then what do you need? Three necessities to start with: fire, water, and olive oil.

Ingredient numero uno: fire. The heat mixed with the tantalizing aromas from Nonni's oven created an enticing aura that always attracted the author to Nonni's workplace as a child: "Her kitchen was a wonderland to us, and when we behaved ourselves, Nonni would let us watch her blend the oils and herbs that made her sauces better than anyone else's in the world. The red coals were usually smoldering in the large gray fieldstone oven which occupied one corner of Nonni's spacious kitchen … The huge oven intrigued us, and we loved to watch Nonni or the cook open the center baking compartment of the triangular top which formed a chimney. When this happened, we knew there was something delicious about to be taken out and tasted."

Nonni had clean water, but not at the turn of a faucet knob. Water jugs lined one table in Nonni's space, and all water had to be carried from the family's well, which lay about two blocks away.

Although some chefs prefer to cook in butter in Northern Italy (a sign of that region's stronger cultural ties with France and Germany), olive oil is a prime ingredient for most Mediterranean cooking, including that of Italy. On the olive, Ms. Lo Pinto wrote:

"The olive tree is ten years old before it begins to bear the precious olive-green fruit. From then on it continues to produce for generations … The green species is the olive from which the oil is extracted. The crop is harvested about the middle of November."

She then goes into detail as to how the olives were pressed using environmentally-sensitive "bio-power." Harvested olives were gathered into a 15-foot diameter vat and "covered by a platform on which a heavy stone wheel revolves. A long horizontal bar is attached to the wheel which crushes the olives and pits as it revolves. A patient, blindfolded little donkey is hitched to the bar, and as he walks round and round the platform, the wheel compresses the pits and olives into a conglomerate mass ready for the next process of pressing. The little animal covers several miles in his monotonous journey … "

Of course you're going to need plenty of other supplies and ingredients to make exquisite Italian cuisine: some sharp knives, quality copper pots and pans, along with tomatoes, garlic, basil and herbs, fine cheeses, fresh chicken eggs, and a couple hens to match.

If you can're lucky enough find this little book, use it as your ticket to learn how to make piping-hot "frittatas" (omelettes), herbalicious main courses, and citrus-sweet desserts, just the way "Nonni" used to make it in the old country.

~ Thom White