Italian Holiday Cooking or Cookoff

Italian Holiday Cooking: A Collection of 150 Treasured Recipes

Author: Michele Scicolon

Whether it's Carnivale, Christmas, or Sunday dinner, Italians have a special flair for celebrating. In this inspired new cookbook, food and wine writer Michele Scicolone brings the zest and joy of Italian traditions into American homes. Here are 150 authentic recipes for every occasion and taste, from antipasti and savory pies to pasta, risotto, and polenta; from second courses to an array of special dolce cakes, cookies, and other desserts.

Enjoy Christmas Eve Seafood Salad; Chocolate Passover Cake; Roasted Chestnuts; Fettuccine and Chick Peas for the Day of the Dead; Channukah Fried Chicken; Zeppole, and other dishes sure to make memories. Italian Holiday Cooking also contains fascinating history and lore and stories of homeland traditions Italian-American families have kept alive in the United States.

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Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America

Author: Amy Sutherland

Competitive cooking isn't limited to Iron Chef. Across America, amateur chefs cross spatulas at more than a thousand competitions covering numerous states and a pantry full of ingredients. Following a small group of contestants for a year on the contest circuit, journalist Amy Sutherland introduces us to well-known cookoff luminaries as well as some of the most bizarre cooks and recipes at local and national contests across the country—from the Great Garlic Cookoff to the National Chicken and National Beef Cookoffs, from the World Champion Jambalaya Cooking Contest to the Pillsbury Bake-Off®, the Holy Grail of competitive cooking. When the fanatics gather—be they chiliheads or barbecue fiends—and hunker down at the hot plate, it can be a recipe for delight or disaster as attitudes get spicy and tempers flare. Bursting with humor, Cookoff is an entertaining and in-depth look at a quirky, cutthroat, and (sometimes) delicious world.

Author Biography: Amy Sutherland has been a food and features writer for fifteen years. Her articles have appeared in the Boston Globe, Disney magazine, and other publications.

Publishers Weekly

In this engrossing look at the competitive cooking circuit, journalist Sutherland follows the trail of competitions and a small group of regular participants. These often fanatical competitors, complete with their own Web sites and chat rooms, square off against the amateur one-time-only contenders at local and national levels across the country. With a healthy dose of humor, Sutherland conveys the inside stories and nail-biting moments as the regulars face off. From developing recipes to matching serving wear to outfits, the bravado of the male players and the disasters and pitfalls that can ensue for both regular and amateur alike, this work takes a long, thorough look at this American phenomenon. From chili contests that are more like frat parties to the National Chicken and National Beef competitions, Sutherland crisscrosses the country and along the way conveys her growing enthusiasm for and fascination with why one recipe or dish wins and another loses. She intersperses winning recipes with the account of her own growing delight, which leads her to enter a competition herself. Doing for cookoffs what Anthony Bourdain did for the restaurant business with Kitchen Confidential, Sutherland delivers a wonderful portrait of a true slice of Americana that should have readers reaching for their recipe files and saying, "I can do that." (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Hidden behind the names of recipe contest winners on the covers of checkout-line magazines is an entire subculture of food competition. Flooding cookoffs and recipe contests with their entries, regular contestants-there are more than the reader may have realized-and casual entrants rework old favorites and new trends to win sometimes lucrative prizes. Food writer Sutherland of the Portland Press Herald (Maine) spent a year crisscrossing the country, getting close to contestants at bakeoffs, chili cookoffs, county fairs, and other competitions. While the food that Sutherland encounters is occasionally dismal, she seldom judges the competitors, no matter what their back story. Each chapter is neatly self-contained, and while the winners of each cookoff are sometimes telegraphed a bit early, the reader will enjoy what amounts to a series of short epics; winning recipes follow several chapters. An engrossing read, this is suitable for public libraries.-Peter Hepburn, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.