What do you think?
Rate this book
Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania
Arthur Schwartz, popular radio host, cookbook author, and veteran restaurant critic, invites you to join him as he celebrates the food and people of Naples and Campania. Encompassing the provinces of Avellino, Benevento, Caserta, and Salerno, the internationally famous resorts of the Amalfi Coast, Capri, and Ischia—and, of course, Naples itself, Italy's third largest and most exuberant city—Campania is the cradle of Italian-American cuisine.
In Naples at Table, Arthur Schwartz takes a fresh look at the region's major culinary contributions to the world—its pizza, dried pasta, seafood, and vegetable dishes, its sustaining soups and voluptuous desserts—and offers the recipes for some of Campania's lesser-known specialties as well. Always, he provides all the techniques and details you need to make them with authenticity and ease.
Naples at Table is the first cookbook in English to survey and document the cooking of this culturally important and gastronomically rich area. Schwartz spent years traveling to Naples and throughout the region, making friends, eating at their tables, working with home cooks and restaurant chefs, researching the origins of each recipe. Here, then, are recipes that reveal the truly subtle, elegant Neapolitan hand with such familiar dishes as baked ziti, eggplant parmigiana, linguine with clam sauce, and tomato sauces of all kinds.
This is the Italian food the world knows best, at its best—bold and vibrant flavors made from few ingredients, using the simplest techniques. Think Sophia Loren—and check out her recipe for Chicken Caccistora! Discover the joys of preparing a timballo like the pasta-filled pastry in the popular film Big Night. Or simply rediscover how truly delicious, satisfying, and healthful Campanian favorites can be—from vegetable dished such as stuffed peppers and garlicky greens to pasta sauces you can make while the spaghetti boils or the Neapolitans' famous long-simmered ragu, redolent with the flavors of meat and red wine. Then there's the succulent baked lamb Neapolitans love to serve to company, the lentils and pasta they make for family meals, baked pastas that go well beyond the red-sauce stereotype, their repertoire of deep-fried morsels, the pan of pork and pickled peppers so dear to Italian-American hearts, and the most delicate meatballs on earth. All are wonderfully old-fashioned and familiar, yet in hands of a Neapolitan, strikingly contemporary and ideal for today's busy cooks and nutrition-minded sybarites.
Finally, what better way to feed a sweet tooth than with a Neapolitan dessert? Ice cream and other frozen fantasies were brought to their height in Baroque Naples. Baba, the rum-soaked cake, still reigns in every pastry shop. Campamnians invented ricotta cheesecake, and Arthur Schwartz predicts that the region's easily assembled refrigerator cakes—delizie or delights—are soon going to replace tiramisu on America's tables. In any case, one bite of zuppa inglese, a Neapolitan take on English trifle, and you'll be singing "That's Amore."
A trip with Arthur Schwartz to Naples and its surrounding regions is the next best thing to being there. Join him as he presents the finest traditional and contemporary foods of the region, and shares myth, legend, history, recipes, and reminiscences with American fans, followers, and fellow lovers of all things Italian.
In Naples at Table, Arthur Schwartz takes a fresh look at the region's major culinary contributions to the world—its pizza, dried pasta, seafood, and vegetable dishes, its sustaining soups and voluptuous desserts—and offers the recipes for some of Campania's lesser-known specialties as well. Always, he provides all the techniques and details you need to make them with authenticity and ease.
Naples at Table is the first cookbook in English to survey and document the cooking of this culturally important and gastronomically rich area. Schwartz spent years traveling to Naples and throughout the region, making friends, eating at their tables, working with home cooks and restaurant chefs, researching the origins of each recipe. Here, then, are recipes that reveal the truly subtle, elegant Neapolitan hand with such familiar dishes as baked ziti, eggplant parmigiana, linguine with clam sauce, and tomato sauces of all kinds.
This is the Italian food the world knows best, at its best—bold and vibrant flavors made from few ingredients, using the simplest techniques. Think Sophia Loren—and check out her recipe for Chicken Caccistora! Discover the joys of preparing a timballo like the pasta-filled pastry in the popular film Big Night. Or simply rediscover how truly delicious, satisfying, and healthful Campanian favorites can be—from vegetable dished such as stuffed peppers and garlicky greens to pasta sauces you can make while the spaghetti boils or the Neapolitans' famous long-simmered ragu, redolent with the flavors of meat and red wine. Then there's the succulent baked lamb Neapolitans love to serve to company, the lentils and pasta they make for family meals, baked pastas that go well beyond the red-sauce stereotype, their repertoire of deep-fried morsels, the pan of pork and pickled peppers so dear to Italian-American hearts, and the most delicate meatballs on earth. All are wonderfully old-fashioned and familiar, yet in hands of a Neapolitan, strikingly contemporary and ideal for today's busy cooks and nutrition-minded sybarites.
Finally, what better way to feed a sweet tooth than with a Neapolitan dessert? Ice cream and other frozen fantasies were brought to their height in Baroque Naples. Baba, the rum-soaked cake, still reigns in every pastry shop. Campamnians invented ricotta cheesecake, and Arthur Schwartz predicts that the region's easily assembled refrigerator cakes—delizie or delights—are soon going to replace tiramisu on America's tables. In any case, one bite of zuppa inglese, a Neapolitan take on English trifle, and you'll be singing "That's Amore."
A trip with Arthur Schwartz to Naples and its surrounding regions is the next best thing to being there. Join him as he presents the finest traditional and contemporary foods of the region, and shares myth, legend, history, recipes, and reminiscences with American fans, followers, and fellow lovers of all things Italian.
484 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1998
98 people are currently reading
98 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 19, 2007
I have a bunch of cookbooks, but this is the only one I've ever used- and I use it nearly every day. I've fallen in love with it. The informative tidbits scattered throughout are delightful, and the recipes have proven time and again to be outstanding- both as they are, and when used as a springboard in the re-creation of old family favorites. If you own one Italian cookbook, let this be the one.
May 31, 2017
I've had this book for many years and love it to frayed pages. All my grandparents were from Campania, on the coast near Sorrento and inland in a little place called Valle Agricola. This book is the closest I've ever found to their style of cooking. It brings back great memories of them and my parents - and the food - can't be beat! Thank you Arthur Schwartz and the many Campanian cooks who shared their recipes.
December 10, 2010
A really great book shows us how everything is great and worth to die for
August 25, 2018
if you are a NYer who love to eat - you know Arthur,
this is a classic book!
a must for people who love to eat and love to cook
this is a classic book!
a must for people who love to eat and love to cook
May 19, 2013
I have lived (and eaten) in Naples for over three years, and for my money, this is the best English language Italian cookbook. This is an encyclopedia of real, genuine, southern Italian food - not Olive Garden or microwaved Lasagna from TGIF.
Arthur Schwartz is a New York food critic, cook book author, chef, and radio personality. He grew up in an Italian American neighborhood, eating southern Italian food, and it shows in his writing. He manages to capture not only Neapolitan recipes and cooking, but a real sense of both the city and the nearby countryside. My favorite is his discourse on Chicken Cacciatore, to include variant recipes from Sophia Loren and the nearby port (and former Greek colony) of Pozzuoli.
In short, this is the absolute best English language cookbook on Neapolitan food - which, any real Italian will tell you, is some of the best food Italy has to offer. If I could only have one Italian cookbook, it would this one.
It's out of print, so yo'll have to search for it on E-Bay, Amazone used marketplace, or used bookstore But if you do, you'll be happy you did. When you taste the meals you will feel like you are in dining in the shadow of the volcano, gazing out into the Bay of Naples!
Arthur Schwartz is a New York food critic, cook book author, chef, and radio personality. He grew up in an Italian American neighborhood, eating southern Italian food, and it shows in his writing. He manages to capture not only Neapolitan recipes and cooking, but a real sense of both the city and the nearby countryside. My favorite is his discourse on Chicken Cacciatore, to include variant recipes from Sophia Loren and the nearby port (and former Greek colony) of Pozzuoli.
In short, this is the absolute best English language cookbook on Neapolitan food - which, any real Italian will tell you, is some of the best food Italy has to offer. If I could only have one Italian cookbook, it would this one.
It's out of print, so yo'll have to search for it on E-Bay, Amazone used marketplace, or used bookstore But if you do, you'll be happy you did. When you taste the meals you will feel like you are in dining in the shadow of the volcano, gazing out into the Bay of Naples!
December 11, 2014
this was a truly excellent cookbook.Nearly everythings looks delicious and the explanations given really helpful with tips everywhere...;really one of the best written cookbooks I have ever read (and believe me, I've read tons)
There are only two reasons why I didn't give it a 5:
- The ingredients were too often the same hence not enough variations for my tastes but maybe it goes with Napolitan cooking I don't know...
- The desserts where everything I despise...spongy, soapy, sugary things and many just looked like a hasardous melting.Well, I'll just skip that part and stick too the ret of the book.
There are only two reasons why I didn't give it a 5:
- The ingredients were too often the same hence not enough variations for my tastes but maybe it goes with Napolitan cooking I don't know...
- The desserts where everything I despise...spongy, soapy, sugary things and many just looked like a hasardous melting.Well, I'll just skip that part and stick too the ret of the book.
March 29, 2018
This is a wonderful Cook book for those unfamiliar with Neapolitan cooking. If you are familiar and grew up with cooking like this you probably don’t need this book but I did not so this cook book was I opening to me. And many recipes have become staples in our yearly rotation of dishes. Especially thePumpkin and pasta dish and the concept of putting sliced and quartered hard boiled egg in baked ziti along with Italian salami.
Want to read
May 11, 2011Some of these recipes are very meat-centric and so not up my alley (vegetarian), but others seem interesting.
Want to read
October 23, 2011in Lonely Planet Naples
February 23, 2015
Great book, lots of micro-history lessons mixed in with recipes. I will be buying this one!
October 21, 2016
Authentic Italian cookbook with history of recipes and regions included.
March 9, 2012
Great stories about Naples and wonderful authentic recipes.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews