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|  Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers. 1 of 1 found the following review helpful: Entertaining, Unpretentious and YummyMar 10, 2010I got this book about a week and a half ago, and I like it so much that I've been lugging it around the house like a security blanket. I bought it in the first place because I ate at one of Lynch's restaurants. It seemed worthwhile to pay for the chance of recreating those gnocchi at home. Lynch is very generous with her most popular recipes - she gives up the secrets to a best-selling bolognese sauce, the gnocchi that every single reviewer of Sportello raves about, and the dish that pretty much made No. 9 Park famous. The recipes run the full cycle of seasonality, and many can be dressed up or down as you like. (Some are harder to dress down, but it seems that the key to dressing a lot of food up is serving it in small containers.) Some of these recipes are very simple. The gorgonzola fondue isn't a whole lot more than melted cheese. The marinara sauce can be thrown together out of kitchen staples in under half an hour. A number of the soups (particularly the white bean and hazelnut and the spicy tomato) look interesting and uncomplicated. Tomato jam and tomato confit are on my experiment list for tomato season. Some of these recipes, by contrast, look like they would take a few hours a day for most of a week for a home cook to construct. Lynch likes olives more than I do, but she's the kind of cook who makes me wonder if maybe I'm just wrong about olives. She uses a lot more fat than I do, but I can see ways to trim it. Best of all, Lynch has a charming willingness to draw back the curtain and expose the machinery of her work to the reader. Some of the recipes come neatly apart into building blocks for other recipes (the chicken soup could be a weekend lunch with whatever vegetables you have on hand thrown in), and she includes a few actual building block recipes (homemade pasta, chicken stock, tomato confit, cooked white beans, homemade ricotta). In many places, you have the option of using store-bought ingredients or making your own. The recipes are easy to follow: the results may look intimidating, but the instructions don't. I think it is unlikely that I will ever make prune-stuffed gnocchi with foie gras sauce, but the chances have increased by an order of magnitude since this time last week, so who knows what will happen.  Stir: Mixing It Up in the Italian TraditionFeb 05, 2010The flavors of both South Boston and Italy come to life in Barbara Lynch's first cookbook, //Stir: Mixing It Up In The Italian Tradition//. Lynch, a James Beard Award-winning chef, has crafted a book that includes not only the usual suspects in Italian cuisine, but also some uniquely original recipes, as well. //Stir//'s chapters run the gamut from Starters And Small Bites to From The Sea; Chicken, Duck, And A Goose; and the quintessential A Passion For Pasta. Cleverly named, there are dishes both familiar (Fried Calamari with Spicy Aioli, Gnocchi, a Pappardelle with Tangy Veal Ragu) and exotic (Spiced Prunes, Chicken Meatball Lasagnettes, Poulet Au Pain). None of the recipes are overly complicated, making them appealing to even the modest chef, though Lynch's insistence on making and using fresh pasta dough may intimidate the lesser skilled. Packed with a nice variety of recipes, and including an array of simple but useful tips ("start with the best ingredients," "season well and keep tasting"), Lynch's cookbook is a must-have for anyone looking to impress with their grasp of Italian cooking. Reviewed by Mark Petruska 3 of 5 found the following review helpful: Great Italian Styled CookbookDec 18, 2009An amazing collection of real and approachable recipes easy to duplicate and not complicated. The gnocchi gnudi is amazing, as are all the recipes. Something anyone can use and something everyone should have. This is my go to book for Italian. 10 of 14 found the following review helpful: Contemporary stuff, philosophically ItalianDec 08, 2009You gotta understand... I need another Italian cookbook like my dog needs another chew toy, and you can't walk around here in the dark... it's all "ouch," sqeeeeeeeeeeeeeak and sleep-deprived curses. So, I resisted. Mightily. But I guess you'll have to take my word for it. And, then one day at the bookstore over a crapaccino and inferior pastry I spied Lynch's book on the shelf and said to myself. "What can it hurt? I'll just look." I watch VH1 rehab shows. Now I know they would call me browsing in the cookbook section a "trigger." "A tomato tarte tatine recipe with fried basil leaves and puff pastry and confit? I've been looking for one with an edge." And so it began. Went home, made it by memory, only added a circle of parchment paper liner for easy flipping and then, once tasted, did the wise sage thing and ordered it off Amazon for $12 less than the bookstore. 'Cause with roast beef this is better than almost anything, assuming that perfect mashed potatoes and gravy are a given. This is an excellent stand-alone first course in my mind, centered pristinely on a square black plate with a fried basil leaves laying around casual, like it's no big deal. I could vary it... the plate could be white and if the day was otherwise perfect, I could do it with fish and black olives. You know how the last suit you bought is bound to be your favorite? Well, this book is officially my favorite and I don't see that changing anytime soon. I haven't made oeuf's a la neige in a million years and I'll try hers real soon, the strawberries being a "I should have thought of that" situation. There's a lot here to pique and center your cooking energies. For me, it doesn't work to wander too far off from cooking... just when I decide that all a home kitchen requires is a fresh pinapple artfully displayed on a gleaming counter and take-out in the fridge, a book like this snaps me back to one of my main passions in life, cooking that matters. So, the only question remains is "What makes this book Italian?" because it's not a traditional Italian cookbook. To me, it is partly the sauces and pasta and beans and slow cook dishes, but a lot of other cuisines have that stuff and she brings in other stuff like the oeuf's and pate and brioche, which drifts a bit north GPS-wise. Mostly, I think, it's the mindset. There is a gutsy and fresh-produce perfection to Italian food, I think, that categorizes it philosophically. Lynch is easy to like. I identify with Lynch's love of home ec class. My serves-20 cheesecake baked while I mandatorily went to phys ed class (instead of babysitting it like any reasonable person would do) and emptied a 750 student high school in a winter storm but overall my memories of cooking and sewing a polyester jumper (out of "bonded material" making it as supple as a space suit) were my best memories of the public school deal. Buy the book. Edgy. Contemporary. Centering. 5 of 6 found the following review helpful: Pasta QueenDec 07, 2009Stir is an action word-a verb. So if your into actual cooking then this book is a road map to sucess. Lynch offers the action cook a way to excell-especially with Pasta and Fish and an easy way it is .I have prepared over nine of her receipes without one problem.If you like the American Test Kitchen way with receipes then your going to love this truly easy step-by-step way to Italin/French creativity. A cannot miss cookbook.
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Growing up in public housing in a tough neighborhood in Boston, I couldn't afford culinary school. Cookbooks like Waverly Root's The Food of Italy not only taught me about new ingredients and techniques but were an escape. (They also helped me bluff my way through my first cooking job.) Now I get to do what I love best: making people happy by feeding them really delicious food. In Stir, I share my passion and my hard-earned knowledge. And of course, I give you my recipes, which the regulars in my restaurants have been clamoring for over the years. Some are almost embarrassingly easy, like Gorgonzola Fondue, Baked Cheese and Tomatoes, and Slow-Roasted Beef Tenderloin with Thyme. Others are a little more involved but oh-so-worth-it, like Chicken and Vegetable Soup with Caraway Gnocchi. There's plenty of weekday cooking, including Green Bean and Seared Shrimp Salad with Spicy Curry Sauce, which I eat all the time, and Lemony Breaded Chicken Cutlets, which my daughter Marchesa loves. Then there are my pastas, which are my very favorite things, such as Chicken Meatball Lasagnettes (a favorite of Julia Child's) and sauces that pair well with both fresh and dried pasta, such as my signature Bolognese (I share my secret ingredient). All of my recipes are written with the home cook in mind and so are full of the details that make a difference. I hope Stir will inspire you. Enjoy!
based on 9 reviews
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