Everyday Italian: 125 Simple and Delicious Recipes by Giada De Laurentiis Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Everyday Italian: 125 Simple and Delicious Recipes
Book Review: Flavorless Recipes
Summary: 1 Stars
I love to watch Giada's show and am a fan, but this cookbook is a big disappointment. The recipes are simple which is great, but they are unfortunately bland. Very bland. I'd have to say that her fettucini alfredo recipe is so flavorless you'd be better off just buying sauce from a jar.
I've given this cookbook several tries and have yet to prepare a meal from it that was better than 'meh.' There is nothing special here. If you purchase this book plan on having to tweak each recipe to add flavor. If you're okay with that, then you will enjoy the book because it is attractive. If you want a cookbook with flavorful as-written recipes then this won't be the book for you.
Book Review: Fun!
Summary: 5 Stars
Giada's recipes are great. What makes them great is that they are easy and yet very elegant. Also, the ingredients are easy to come by and not so expensive and rare that you end up shelving the book. I really enjoy putting together her recipes and so far - my boyfriend has been going back for seconds each time.
I'm new to cooking and I work full time so another thing I enjoy about her recipes is that most of them don't take forever to make. I save the long ones for the weekends.
In the front of her book is a warm introduction and a small list of ingredients that she always keeps on hand. I found that to be very useful. I went to the grocery store and bought the staple items and some of the things I saw while skimming through the recipes. What I love is that I can come home from work and if I haven't been shopping in a while, I can always whip something up with little more than the staple items and the dishes still look beautiful and taste great too!
Giada offers some background to each recipe and I think that's a nice touch. Overall her book is easy to follow, has fantastic recipes and has proven to be the only one I use. Now I just have to getthe other books and I'll be all set!
Book Review: love it
Summary: 5 Stars
well i bought this book for a friend for christmas she is a newly wed and she love giada she absolutly itBook Review: I love Giada!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Another great cookbook from my favorite Cooking Network star. Her recipes are elegant, easy, healthy--and delicious. You just can't go wrong with Giada De Laurentis!Book Review: Excellent chicken piccata, disappointed on the lasagne
Summary: 4 Stars
I've had a mixed experience with this cookbook. So far I've made 2 recipes: Classic Italian Lasagne and Chicken Piccata, one turned out well and the other wasn't impressive.
My mom and I decided to stray from our usual lasagne recipe and try the one in this book. As we started making the sauces from scratch and preparing the fillings we realized that the recipe was a bit more work than we anticipated. I had expected "Everyday Italian" to refer to meals that could be prepared on a weeknight with a reasonable amount of work, but this was more effort than I would do on a "regular night". Once we made it, I wasn't all that impressed with the flavor, either. Since it calls for bechamel sauce (which we had to make from scratch, by the way), it was too rich for me. I think everyone has their own idea of what lasagne should taste like and maybe this just wasn't mine. I probably won't be making that one again.
Giada did redeem herself with the Chicken Piccata recipe, though. It was easy enough to prepare that I was surprised at how delicious it turned out! Very elegant and yet very simple. It is definitely a candidate for serving to guests.
One thing that did bother me a bit was the recipe for prosciutto-wrapped breadsticks - it calls for refrigerated breadstick dough (like Pillsbury!) Somehow I just didn't think that fit into a cookbook that has recipes for a zillion "made-from-scratch" pasta sauces.
Overall, I'll be keeping this cookbook for the chicken piccata recipe and I may try some of the other similar recipes. I'm not expecting to love every recipe in the book, though.