Pass the rigatoni
Giada de Laurentiis has a new book out, and I bought it, despite never having seen her show on the Food Network and despite flipping through her freshman offering and passing on it. I bought it because Borders sent me a coupon for forty percent off, because the reviews were good, and because Grant seems to approve. The latter is relevant because I figure if I like the recipes he posts on his site, I should trust his cookbook sense as well.
As is my wont, I sat in the bookstore and flipped through the pages first. It’s one of the rare Italian cookbooks that doesn’t use some kind of alcohol in every recipe or devote a large chunk of its pages to pork. Strangely, booze and bacon just doesn’t do it for me. De Laurentiis does use a lot of pancetta and prosciuotto, but I can work around that. Roasted pork loins, on the other hand, leave me grasping for options.
There’s one thing about Giada’s Family Dinners so far. The pictures. Lots of pictures. It’s just that… so many of them aren’t of the food so much as they are of Giada, who is a lovely woman who seems to own only scoop-neck t-shirts. Very scoopy scoop-neck t-shirts. Sometimes you can’t see the food for the scoopiness. If it’s a marketing ploy, I don’t get it, considering the cover of the book is relatively tame, and in any case, your target audience probably doesn’t care to see those particular features.
(Ivan pretended he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Ken took it like an honest man and admitted the pictures were… distracting.)
For the most part, I’m willing to forgive in exchange for the butternut squash lasagna and raspberry tiramisu. I mean, wouldn’t you?
I made her ravioli with creamy tomato sauce last night. I changed it up a bit because I’m attempting to clean out my refrigerator before the vegetables I bought two weeks ago and the multiple open bottles of pasta sauce spoil; I always feel so guilty when I let food go bad that it preys on my conscience when I know I have potential for rot in the fridge, and then my obsessive-compulsive self has to do something about it expediently. In any case, de Laurentiis did say the recipe was open for manipulation, so I’m comfortable appraising it even with my tweaks.
It’s fast, simple, and unpretentious, and the resulting dish is very acceptable for a weekday meal. I don’t know that I’d serve it at a fancy dinner party, except perhaps as a starter. The recipe that I really want to try is her penne with creamy spinach sauce, but I have to finish going through the refrigerator first.