OP: Cucina Fresca, Pasta Fresca, and Cucina Rustica (3 vols)

$100 · Offered by Kitchen Arts & Letters · No longer available

Two smart and reliable cooks and writers joined forces in the 1980s to give us some of our most enduring and favored cookbooks on Italian cuisine. Viana La Place, who lived and worked in Italy for many years, and Evan Kleiman, then chef/owner of the former Los Angeles restaurant Angeli, offer food that “places few demands on the cook or the eater, except to succumb to the pleasures of the table.” The byword of Italian home cooks is simplicity. Cucina Fresca (1985), their first book, offers a lively array of cold and room temperature dishes. This genre, popular in Italy, is by definition make-ahead food, and it generally carries the principle of simplicity to the highest level. Other than salt, pepper, garlic, and olive oil, most of the preparations contain only a handful of ingredients, and even these are regarded as flexible components, the use of which depends on availability and on the cook’s personal preferences. In print for nearly 40 years, Cucina Fresca has played a significant role in raising general consciousness about Italian home food and, through demonstrating its accessibility, helped bring it to a level at which it began to rival French cuisine in popularity. (When asked what his favorite cookbook is and if absolutely forced to respond—who among us could choose a favorite child?—Matt will pull Fresca off the shelf and wax poetically to rapt customers who are sold on it immediately.) Pasta Fresca (1988), the second book in the trio, takes the same principles of u

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.