Clifford A. Wright

I realize that cookbooks are a wonderful way to learn about new tastes, textures, foods.... But, PRESENTATION IS EVERYTHING! In this book there is only 8 double sided photographs of the prepared dishes at the front of the book.

The rest of the 245 (double sided pages) are on cheap paper in a plain print, which runs together (I wear trifocals), and the 500 recipes read like a text book.

There are much better cookbooks presentation-wise on this subject. I can't tell you too much about the recipes, they were too difficult to read.


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I have rated this a bit higher than others, due to the valuable inclusion of culinary history and the Arab influences in the island--which reach far beyond food and cooking into place names, vocabulary, art and architecture. For a general history of Sicilian food and foodways, though, I always prefer and refer Mary Taylor Simeti's "Pomp and circumstance : twenty-five centuries of Sicilian food"

This is the main reason that I bought this particular book, as I already have several other Sicilian cookbooks. For someone who (albeit in America) was raised in a predominantly Sicilian-culture household, the recipes themselves are fairly pedestrian, although any number of them will seem exotic to others: tuna and raisins in a sweet-sour sauce any one?… (plus d'informations)