A recipe book that reflects the way I cook and eat: uncomplicated, direct and adaptable Italian family food that reflects the season. From tomato and salted ricotta salad, caponata and baked Sicilian pasta to lemon crumble, honeyed peaches and almond and chocolate cake, it features authentic recipes that you will want to cook again and again.
Rachel Roddy's writing is as absorbing as any novel. Her prose is so elegant and her story-telling so compelling that I almost forgot I was reading a cookbook.
This very entertaining book is a perfect marriage of the personal with the practical. Rachel has the ability of combining intimate reminiscences with excellent recipes. If you want to know anything about the food of Rome or Sicily, this is the book for you.
Rachel Roddy describing how to boil potatoes would inspire me. I want to live under her kitchen table. There are very, very few who possess such a supremely uncluttered culinary voice as hers, just now.
Rachel Roddy brings the warm flavours of the south into our northern kitchens. Her dishes from Sicily and Rome are linked by family stories, and both place and food are beautifully photographed. I shall cook from this book with pleasure.
Her writing is elegant and her recipes tempting - the perfect combination.
Roddy's writing often reminds me of a more generous, more evocative Elizabeth David.
Rachel Roddy's first book,
Five Quarters, became the kind of read that cookbook lovers and foodies urge each other to buy. Her new book is full of recipes further expanding on the idea of
Five Quarters, that no two Italian dishes are the same.
Such a talented storyteller and skilled cook.
Fantastic
Two Kitchens: Family Recipes from Sicily and Rome by Rachel Roddy, the award-winning
Guardian Cook columnist and winner of the Andre Simon and Guild of Food Writers', delivers a glorious book highlighting the food that comes from her two kitchens in Sicily and Rome. Rachel's first title
Five Quarters is on my bookshelf and I cannot wait to have this title join it. I had the privilege of reviewing the electronic version and it is spectacular - Rachel's beautiful writing, stunning photographs and scrumptious recipes makes this title a must have.
Guardian columnist and Rome-resident Rachel Roddy is one of the current most popular voices in food writing, with her debut book
Five Quarters winning her the André Simon Food Book Award. In this, her second title, Rachel shares over 120 traditional Italian recipes, with their inspiration coming from both her own Roman kitchen alongside the one of her Sicilian partner Vincenzo. With writing as gorgeous as the recipes it sits alongside, this is a book to treasure and one to which you'll often return.
Expect simple dishes with Italy's bountiful ingredients at their core, from honeyed peaches to Sicilian pasta, as well as plenty of Rachel's beautifully evocative writing.
Buy Rachel Roddy's brilliant Italian-Sicilian cookbook,
Two Kitchens.
She had me at griddled aubergine left overnight in a deep pool of olive oil with chilli and garlic.
It is a book full of lip-smacking recipes and, in the margins, a vision of a lifestyle to envy.
Best of all is Rachel Roddy's
Two Kitchens, a wonderful account of the cooking of Sicily and Rome by an English writer who lives in Rome with a Sicilian husband. This is cooking that's grounded in the place but with the appreciation of someone who comes to a rich tradition from outside. It's a fine selection of recipes, written in the most engaging way.
This charming book is a classic in the making.
A beautiful read.
For enchantingly fragrant, earthy food from below Italy's tomato line there's Rachel Roddy's
Two Kitchens. Roddy has lived in both places, discovered a great variety of dishes and writes about them with joy and know-how. I'd like large helpings of her chicken with citrus and olives after a starter of pasta with cauliflower, anchovies, saffron, pinenuts and raisins.
The prose is gorgeous and mouthwatering.
You'll want to cook it all.
[Two Kitchens] is a testament to a life lived well between Rome and Sicily, delving into deep-rooted culinary traditions and discovering ways to improvise new ones
Rachel Roddy's 2015 debut,
Five Quarters, remains a delightful read, quite apart from the recipes. It tells the story of the author's move from London to Rome, and the resultant change in her relationship with food. In
Two Kitchens, she relates the next stage of her Italian education: an exploration of the culinary culture of Sicily, where her partner was born. The flavours are fresh and summery - chicken balls with lemon and ricotta, for example - and much time is devoted to vegetables and other side-dishes. As in Five Quarters, Roddy's warmth, humour and love of Italian ingredients shines through the prose.
Rachel Roddy writes a weekly award-winning column in Guardian Cook. Rachel's first book Five Quarters won the André Simon Food Book award in 2015, as well as the Guild of Food Writers' First Book award.
Rachel has lived in Testaccio, a distinctive working-class quarter of Rome, for over twelve years. She shares a small flat near the food market with her partner Vincenzo and son Luca and spends part of the year in Vincenzo's family house in Gela, south-east Sicily.
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