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Frank Stitt's Bottega Favorita
There are some places worth traveling to just for the food: Rome, Venice . . . and now, Birmingham, Italy.
In this companion to his first, best-selling cookbook, the beloved Southern chef Frank Stitt travels to Italy and brings the best of Mediterranean cuisine back home. To Stitt's mind, the two regions—Italy and the American South—share commonalities. Both native cuisines have a tradition of turning humble ingredients—ground corn, bitter greens, cured pork, the daily catch—into poetry on the plate. And as the chef points out in his lively introduction to the book, this is elemental cooking based on the purity and simplicity of the freshest and finest ingredients.
Yet leave it to Stitt to make Italian cuisine his own. "There's no Pompano in Venice, but ours, fresh from Apalachicola, fits into the cartoccio (Italian fish stew) perfectly; our Chilton County white peaches are squeezed by hand for a bellini; our wild Gulf shrimp, oysters, crab, and fish are easily a match for their Mediterranean equivalents," Stitt writes. This appealing new cookbook includes the best of the Southern-influenced Italian recipes he has served at his Birmingham, Alabama, restaurant Bottega Restaurant and Café, for the last two decades—the Tomato Chutney and Roasted Sweet Pepper Pizza, Lamb Shanks with Sweet Peas and Mint, and fabulous desserts including Zabaglione Meringue Cake. Accompanied by sweet recollections of his journeys to Italy, this inspiring and accessible cookbook proves once again why the novelist Pat Conroy calls Stitt "the best chef in America."
In this companion to his first, best-selling cookbook, the beloved Southern chef Frank Stitt travels to Italy and brings the best of Mediterranean cuisine back home. To Stitt's mind, the two regions—Italy and the American South—share commonalities. Both native cuisines have a tradition of turning humble ingredients—ground corn, bitter greens, cured pork, the daily catch—into poetry on the plate. And as the chef points out in his lively introduction to the book, this is elemental cooking based on the purity and simplicity of the freshest and finest ingredients.
Yet leave it to Stitt to make Italian cuisine his own. "There's no Pompano in Venice, but ours, fresh from Apalachicola, fits into the cartoccio (Italian fish stew) perfectly; our Chilton County white peaches are squeezed by hand for a bellini; our wild Gulf shrimp, oysters, crab, and fish are easily a match for their Mediterranean equivalents," Stitt writes. This appealing new cookbook includes the best of the Southern-influenced Italian recipes he has served at his Birmingham, Alabama, restaurant Bottega Restaurant and Café, for the last two decades—the Tomato Chutney and Roasted Sweet Pepper Pizza, Lamb Shanks with Sweet Peas and Mint, and fabulous desserts including Zabaglione Meringue Cake. Accompanied by sweet recollections of his journeys to Italy, this inspiring and accessible cookbook proves once again why the novelist Pat Conroy calls Stitt "the best chef in America."
269 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
33 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 2, 2024
This isn't interesting all the way through, but it's a solid reference for things like sauces, variations on risotto, and cocktails if that's your thing (it's not mine), and it has a very good dessert section. Reading through it is also guaranteed to make you want to cook and drink wine.
It does something that irritates me in a cookbook: it includes really basic recipes that everyone already knows, even without cookbooks. For example, pasta with pesto, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes with herbs, cannellini bean purée. That said, there are interesting variations on classics, like a spring vegetable lasagna that looks extremely delicious, if a bit artery-clogging (the dairy ingredients it calls for are ricotta, béchamel, fresh mozz, fontina, parm, AND pecorino).
The recipe that stands out to me isn't really a recipe, exactly. It's mozzarella grilled in a lemon leaf, then drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with lemon zest. Now this speaks to what I love in life - namely, lemons and my beautiful special lemon tree - and also gives me something new to do with my most beloved garden denizen. I will not be able to try this for a while, but it did set me on a path of discovery in terms of things to do with lemon leaves. Since then, I've been using them for tea and as a substitution for bay leaf (though I have plenty of those too).
However, it does make me wonder where you would BUY lemon leaves, if you don't happen to live in a climate where everyone grows citrus. I've never seen them at any store and I've shopped at a lot of interesting grocery stores/co-ops. For that reason it's a slightly odd recipe to include, although I understand that it lends atmosphere and authenticity to the book as a whole.
Oh, who am I kidding? It's an Italian cookbook with lemon recipes that makes me want to cook and drink wine, and I will certainly be making its impractical parmesan soufflés and stuffed crespelles and braised chicken thighs and maybe even its limoncello. Certainly its jaw-dropping and time-consuming lemon semifreddo, which is made of génoise sponge, lemon curd, whipped cream, lemon sauce, and candied lemon zest. Ultimately, this is mostly a mediocre cookbook with a few utterly special gems.
It does something that irritates me in a cookbook: it includes really basic recipes that everyone already knows, even without cookbooks. For example, pasta with pesto, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes with herbs, cannellini bean purée. That said, there are interesting variations on classics, like a spring vegetable lasagna that looks extremely delicious, if a bit artery-clogging (the dairy ingredients it calls for are ricotta, béchamel, fresh mozz, fontina, parm, AND pecorino).
The recipe that stands out to me isn't really a recipe, exactly. It's mozzarella grilled in a lemon leaf, then drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with lemon zest. Now this speaks to what I love in life - namely, lemons and my beautiful special lemon tree - and also gives me something new to do with my most beloved garden denizen. I will not be able to try this for a while, but it did set me on a path of discovery in terms of things to do with lemon leaves. Since then, I've been using them for tea and as a substitution for bay leaf (though I have plenty of those too).
However, it does make me wonder where you would BUY lemon leaves, if you don't happen to live in a climate where everyone grows citrus. I've never seen them at any store and I've shopped at a lot of interesting grocery stores/co-ops. For that reason it's a slightly odd recipe to include, although I understand that it lends atmosphere and authenticity to the book as a whole.
Oh, who am I kidding? It's an Italian cookbook with lemon recipes that makes me want to cook and drink wine, and I will certainly be making its impractical parmesan soufflés and stuffed crespelles and braised chicken thighs and maybe even its limoncello. Certainly its jaw-dropping and time-consuming lemon semifreddo, which is made of génoise sponge, lemon curd, whipped cream, lemon sauce, and candied lemon zest. Ultimately, this is mostly a mediocre cookbook with a few utterly special gems.
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September 25, 2013Awesome stories and photos too! The recipes I have yet to try, but can hardly wait to. I'm going to Bottega soon to enjoy some of them!
June 23, 2009
Haven't cooked from this yet but the recipes are drool-making.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews