Cucina Italiana Comes to Brooklyn

<p>This is a book that takes the cooking that millions of us grew up with and reproduces it for the contemporary American kitchen. Specifically it is for the millions of Italian-Americans and their families who have left the Little Italys of our cities and fanned out over the country a book to help them recreate in the kitchen much of what they left behind. Second I also want to touch all those who might not be Italian and who think they're cooking Italian when they reach for that jar of already-prepared tomato sauce they bought at the supermarket. I want to help them see how easy and how infinitely more delicious preparing something simple like real tomato sauce can be.</p><p></p><p>My aim is for this to be a book that's easy to read interesting to read and helpful at every turn. This is not a book of recipe after recipe. It's a book I hope that explains what we're doing and the reasons and the principles of what we are doing on every page.</p><p></p><p>Which also means that in the end this is more than a simple cookbook -- it is also an attempt to give all of us some insight into what made the kitchen and the table the center of Italian-American life for four and five stupendous generations. (I don't wish to overstate the matter but this is the food Joe DiMaggio and Martin Scorsese ate.)</p><p></p><p>By now most children and grandchildren of immigrant Italians have married non-Italians - people who think that 'gnocchi' might be the abbreviation of the Albanian secret police. So if you want a dish of baked ziti or grain pie or some homemade cannoli you're going to have to read this book put on an apron and start cooking. If nothing else it will make your mother happy. </p>