Learn to Speak Italian: Fantastico Modern Italian Food

This is my first ever review on a book as I am simply not a good writer but for this book I have to.
There are so so many books on my shelves, certainly from my home country Austria but Gino's Fantastico has a special place as it gets so many time used.

The dishes are very easy to do, mounthwatering, creativ and realy delicious. I love 'Figs and soft Cheese Rolled in Pharma Ham' or 'Baked Aubergines with Spinach and Pecorino' and my 6 year old son loves 'Crispy fillet of Salmon with Cherry tomato and Anchovy Sauce'.
All ingredients are easy to shop for and the list is short for one dish.

I do love Gino's comments to every recipy and I even read them because they are very funny and entertaining.
Certainly getting his second book which I just discovered. Its out since Oct 08 and I did not know about it!!!

Fantastico! posted on 2008-08-12

Gino's book demonstrates how simple it is to produce excellent italian cooking very easily. All the ingredients are easy to get and use. It's good to see that he doesn't just focus on the traditional pasta dishes, but brings a wide variety of mediteranean flavour to your kitchen. I particularly love his endorsemment of tinned tuna & salmon - no filleting or gutting. Great and easy to use with flavoursome recipes. Fantastico!!!

Good recipes but strange rules posted on 2008-08-12

I bought the book because it looked very interesting and I particularly like Italian cuisine. When it arrived, I found that it actually contained good recipes, but that D'Acampo claims you've got to follow some quite strange rules to produce good food. While I personally would go along with his rule number five ("Concentrate on the flavour of the dish not on what it looks like") every day, I can only shake my head when I read stuff like "Cook alone. Communal cooking spoils the flavour" (Where's the fun in that? And I produced some of the most brilliant results I ever had when I was not cooking alone!) or "Never cook onion and garlic together". Apparently onions and garlic have such great flavours that they will simply spoil the taste of one another. So he claims that none of his dishes contain both, which isn't actually true as I found out while reading the book. Still, if you're looking for some nice italian recipes, you'll probably like the book. Mind though, that this is the American version but it has got a conversion table at the end of the book - pretty helpful.

Love it! posted on 2008-08-11

I really love this book; it's got recipes to suit all occasions, and every one I've tried has turned out very well (and been delicious). I especially like the fish section, and the spaghetti rolled in aubergine recipe was fantastic. Gino's little introductions to each recipe are interesting to read, and charmingly written. I would highly recommend this cookbook.

Italian flair posted on 2008-01-06

As one of Gino's fellow countrymen I am always a bit cagey about books on Italian cuisine, but this is an excellent book with some imaginative recipes which should really give you a flavour of Italian cooking at its best. The ingredients are easy to source and quick to put together. His tips are extremely useful too. What a pity Gino doesn't have his own restaurant!

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