Everyday Italian or In Defense of Food

Everyday Italian: 125 Simple and Delicious Recipes

Author: Giada de Laurentiis

In her hit Food Network show Everyday Italian, Giada De Laurentiis shows you how to cook delicious, beautiful food in a flash. And here, in her long-awaited first book, she does the same-helps you put a fabulous dinner on the table tonight, for friends or just for the kids, with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of flavor. She makes it all look easy, because it is.

Everyday Italian is true to its title: the fresh, simple recipes are incredibly quick and accessible, and also utterly mouth-watering-perfect for everyday cooking. And the book is focused on the real-life considerations of what you actually have in your refrigerator and pantry (no mail-order ingredients here) and what you're in the mood for-whether a simply sauced pasta or a hearty family-friendly roast, these great recipes cover every contingency. So, for example, you'll find dishes that you can make solely from pantry ingredients, or those that transform lowly leftovers into exquisite entrées (including brilliant ideas for leftover pasta), and those that satisfy your yearning to have something sweet baking in the oven. There are 7 ways to make red sauce more interesting, 6 different preparations of the classic cutlet, 5 perfect pestos, 4 creative uses for prosciutto, 3 variations on basic polenta, 2 great steaks, and 1 sublime chocolate tiramisù-plus 100 other recipes that turn everyday ingredients into speedy but special dinners.

What's more, Everyday Italian is organized according to what type of food you want tonight-whether a soul-warming stew for Sunday supper, a quick sauté for a weeknight, or a baked pasta for potluck. These categories will help you figure out what to cook in an instant, with such choices as fresh-from-the-pantry appetizers, sauceless pastas, everyday roasts, and stuffed vegetables-whatever you're in the mood for, you'll be able to find a simple, delicious recipe for it here. That's the beauty of Italian home cooking, and that's what Giada De Laurentiis offers here-the essential recipes to make a great Italian dinner. Tonight.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Author: Michael Pollan

What to eat, what not to eat, and how to think about health: a manifesto for our times.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

…a tough, witty, cogent rebuttal to the proposition that food can be reduced to its nutritional components without the loss of something essential…In this lively, invaluable book—which grew out of an essay Mr. Pollan wrote for The New York Times Magazine, for which he is a contributing writer—he assails some of the most fundamental tenets of nutritionism: that food is simply the sum of its parts, that the effects of individual nutrients can be scientifically measured, that the primary purpose of eating is to maintain health, and that eating requires expert advice…Some of this reasoning turned up in Mr. Pollan's best-selling Omnivore's Dilemma. But In Defense of Food is a simpler, blunter and more pragmatic book, one that really lives up to the "manifesto" in its subtitle.

The Washington Post - Jane Black

…in this slim, remarkable volume, Pollan builds a convincing case not only against that steak dinner but against the entire Western diet. Over the last half-century, Pollan argues, real food has started to disappear, replaced by processed foods designed to include nutrients. Those component parts, he says, are understood only by scientists and exploited by food marketers who thrive on introducing new products that hawk fiber, omega-3 fatty acids or whatever else happens to be in vogue…what makes Pollan's latest so engrossing is his tone: curious and patient as he explains the flaws in epidemiological studies that have buttressed nutritionism for 30 years, and entirely without condescension as he offers those prescriptions Americans so desperately crave. That's no easy feat in a book of this kind.

Publishers Weekly

In his hugely influential treatise The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan traced a direct line between the industrialization of our food supply and the degradation of the environment. His new book takes up where the previous work left off. Examining the question of what to eat from the perspective of health, this powerfully argued, thoroughly researched and elegant manifesto cuts straight to the chase with a maxim that is deceptively simple: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." But as Pollan explains, "food" in a country that is driven by "a thirty-two billion-dollar marketing machine" is both a loaded term and, in its purest sense, a holy grail. The first section of his three-part essay refutes the authority of the diet bullies, pointing up the confluence of interests among manufacturers of processed foods, marketers and nutritional scientists-a cabal whose nutritional advice has given rise to "a notably unhealthy preoccupation with nutrition and diet and the idea of eating healthily." The second portion vivisects the Western diet, questioning, among other sacred cows, the idea that dietary fat leads to chronic illness. A writer of great subtlety, Pollan doesn't preach to the choir; in fact, rarely does he preach at all, preferring to lets the facts speak for themselves. (Jan.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

Pollan provides another shocking yet essential treatise on the industrialized "Western diet" and its detrimental effects on our bodies and culture. Here he lays siege to the food industry and scientists' attempts to reduce food and the cultural practices of eating into bite-size concepts known as nutrients, and contemplates the follies of doing so. As an increasing number of Americans are overfed and undernourished, Pollan makes a strong argument for serious reconsideration of our eating habits and casts a suspicious eye on the food industry and its more pernicious and misleading practices. Listeners will undoubtedly find themselves reconsidering their own eating habits. Scott Brick, who narrated Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, carries forward the same tone and consistency, thus creating a narrative continuity between the two books. Brick renders the text with an expert's skill, delivering well-timed pauses and accurate emphasis. He executes Pollan's asides and sarcasm with an uncanny ability that makes listening infinitely better than reading. So compelling is his tone, listeners may have trouble discerning whether Brick's conviction or talent drives his powerful performance. Simultaneous release with the Penguin Press hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 26). (Dec.)

Copyright 2007Reed Business Information

Table of Contents:

Introduction: An Eater's Manifesto     9
The Age of Nutritionism     29
From Foods to Nutrients     31
Nutritionism Defined     42
Nutritionism Comes to Market     49
Food Science's Golden Age     55
The Melting of the Lipid Hypothesis     59
Eat Right, Get Fatter     73
Beyond the Pleasure Principle     77
The Proof in the Low-Fat Pudding     84
Bad Science     88
Nutritionism's Children     112
The Western Diet and the Diseases of Civilization     117
The Aborigine in All of Us     119
The Elephant in the Room     125
The Industrialization of Eating: What We Do Know     142
From Whole Foods to Refined     148
From Complexity to Simplicity     159
From Quality to Quantity     164
From Leaves to Seeds     172
From Food Culture to Food Science     184
Getting Over Nutritionism     191
Escape from the Western Diet     193
Eat Food: Food Defined     204
Mostly Plants: What to Eat     223
Not Too Much: How to Eat     251
Acknowledgments     279
Sources     285
Resources     325