Overview

With more than 250 easy-to-follow recipes, My Love for Naples packs a lot of punch into a light volume. Callen makes no compromises in authenticity, but neither are any of the recipes unachievable for the home cook. However, with only a few pictures of select recipes, the book may not appeal to those who need them for inspiration and direction.

Full review

Structure of the book

The book has 252 recipes in 14 chapters:
Antipasti (17 recipes)
Soups (18)
Pizza (13)
Sauces (12)
Pasta, Gnocchi, Polenta and Rice (51)
Fish (16)
Poultry and Rabbit (15)
Veal (16)
Beef (9)
Pork (9)
Variety Meats (5)
Vegetables (40)
Salads (9)
and Desserts (22).

It has no pictures among the recipes, except for 16 color plates inserted in the middle of the book. Thanks to light but durable book paper, the books isn’t as heavy as similarly-packed books: it weighs just under 2 pounds (900g). Almost all the recipes take up only one page of the book, and each one has a short introduction. Each chapter is prefaced by some exposition of the relationship of Neapolitans to that particular course or ingredient. The book uses traditional American cookbook measurements: cups and tablespoons, imperial weights for meat, cheese, and small vegetables, and whole numbers for larger vegetables (3 carrots, 1 medium zucchini, etc.).

About the author

From the back cover flap: Anna Teresa Callen, an accomplished food writer, historian, teacher, food consultant, and television personality, was born in Abruzzo, Italy. She is the author of The Wonderful World of Pizzas, Quiches, and Savory Pies, Anna Teresa Callen’s Menus for Pasta, Italian Classics in One Pot, and Food and Memories of Abruzzo, which Newsday named one of the ten best cookbooks of 1999.

How is this book interesting/special/new/useful?

Though the book is light, upon opening it you can tell that it is a culinary heavyweight. It’s filled with recipes nearly from cover to cover, but what’s more interesting is that Callen doesn’t hold back with the recipes, ingredients, or cooking techniques. There is a short chapter on “variety meats” (or offal), which any proper cookbook on Neapolitan cooking should have. In the beef chapter, there is a recipe for ox tail, and half the poultry chapter is devoted to rabbit. Some dishes contain octopus and veal (the preferred meat of Italians) gets its own chapter. There’s even a recipe for pasta sauce that calls for gizzards. It gives the book an authentic feel for what Neapolitan cuisine is like. But since Neapolitan cuisine is characterized by cucina povera (cuisine of the poor), the book emphasizes vegetables and pasta. Pizza, arguably Naples’ most famous dish, quite rightly has its own chapter.

The book contains many of Naples’ most famous dishes: Pizza Margherita, Mozzarella in Carrozza, Pasta e Fagioli, Timballo, Sartù di Riso, Struffoli, and Pastiera. However, the best part of the book is for sauces and starches, and Callen compromised nothing in preparing the recipes: her Il Ragù, or tomato and meat sauce for pasta, calls for a pound of beef chuck, a pound of bone-in pork shoulder, and a pound of bone-in veal shoulder, simmering in a rich tomato sauce for 3 hours. The rest of the sauces are not quite as complex, but it’s interesting to note the vast differences in the way various tomato sauces (to start) are prepared.

The recipes are extremely easy to follow and the directions are straightforward. It doesn’t call for exotic tools that wouldn’t be found in a typical Italian kitchen anyway; only a handful of her recipes use tools like pasta machines, food mills, and food processors. It wouldn’t be difficult for a complete novice in Italian cooking to pick up the book and jump in feet first into the world of delicious authentic Italian cuisine.

What problems/flaws are there?

In today’s age of the internet and food blogging, books that have few illustrations, especially one with this breadth and price, are becoming less common. This can be an issue when treading unfamiliar waters: I tried Stufatino di Gambe di Pollo e Salsicce (Stew of Chicken Legs with Sausage and Mushrooms), and I wasn’t quite sure how much liquid should have remained in the dish (it became almost completely dry, though it was good). Similarly some dishes indicate to add “a little water if necessary” (such as the Cavolo in Agro-Dolce or Cabbage in Sweet-Sour Sauce): not that easy to tell for the more inexperienced cook.

As with most savory cookbooks, the seasoning of food requires quite a bit of experience and good instincts as well. The Bolognese meat sauce asks to season the ground meat as it goes into the pan, and doesn’t indicate any more after that. After adding chicken stock and simmering for forty minutes, the seasoning will most definitely change. The recipe for gnocchi asks for only half a teaspoon of salt for two pounds of potatoes– a tad less flavorful than I would have liked.

Though Callen talks a few times about Braciole, which she even calls one of Naples’ most popular dishes, she doesn’t have the recipe for the famous beef version simmered in tomato sauce. Not one version of calzone is in the pizza chapter. For better or for worse, there’s a curious paucity in fried foods, which I wasn’t expecting in a book about Naples.

The organization of the index is puzzling. While most books nowadays will have an index with the names of certain ingredients admixed with the names of individual recipes (or separate indices), this book has two indices that list ingredients with the recipes under them: one in Italian and one in English. Now that names of certain recipes have achieved enough status to be known by their original name, this can be a bit confusing. I was looking for one of her braciole recipes and looked under pork, but I couldn’t recognize the name. I’d forgotten the Italian word for pork (Maiale), so looking for it in the Italian index was difficult as well. The English name for the dish– Braciole di Maiale Ubriache– was “Drunken Pork Cutlets with Fennel and Red Wine.”

Who might enjoy/use this book most?

This book will probably be most enjoyed by any cook willing to explore the depth of Naples’ cuisine. The recipes are mostly easy, but there’s plenty to keep even experienced cooks who want to know more about this particular region interested. With the lack of illustrations and few photographs it’s not quite as enjoyable to pick up and cook based on a visual impression of a dish, but if you can get past that, you’ll discover that it’s easy to prepare authentic Italian dishes.