Recipe Book Review – Versatile: Cooking & Living Italian*

[Ad-gifted] When it comes to Yeah Lifestyle, we love a good cookbook to review.

We enjoy trawling through the pages finding the perfect thing to re-create and give you a little insight into what we think of the book and the recipes within it. Our latest book is called Versatile Cooking and Living Italian by Grazia Guiliani.

The book focuses on family and a typical Italian approach to cooking and eating together. Grazia Giuliani talks of her youth living in Italy memories of cooking and making jams with her mother and the culture she experienced. It’s an insight into another world alongside a variety of recipes which I will discuss in our latest blog post.

What we thought of the book and recipes

This is a collaborative post with one of our regular recipe creators at Yeah Lifestyle Brigitte, who also happens to be my mum. We choose to look at this book together much in the way the author grew up cooking with her mum, I could feel the connection here as I grew up, quite often, making jam with my mum. My mum did the cooking and recipe reviewing whilst I read the book. So keep reading to see what we thought.

My mum made the selection of recipes to cook from the book and as she loves leeks, both ended up being recipes with leeks! The first is a soup called Crema di Verdura Verde on page 118.

And here’s what she thought: It is very easy to make and tastes really nice. I substituted some of the greens as I could not find the ones she mentioned. This was one of the comments in the recipe that you could substitute the vegetables. I used 1/2 a savoy cabbage, a pack of salad which included spinach, rocket and watercress and added about 1/2 a head of cob lettuce.

I used all the other ingredients mentioned in the recipe. It’s nice with the mascarpone but it could easily be replaced by some double cream. It created a good portion of food and as there are only two of us meant I could put some portioned up into the freezer.

The second recipe was Terrina di Porri, leek ‘hot pot’ on page 141. This dish was again easy enough to follow – although needed a bit of knowledge of cooking to follow the recipe – I will elaborate on this later – I think this would be a perfect side dish to some fish or even as a lunch with a chunky piece of bread. It tasted good and had a nice balance of flavours and felt like a comforting bowl. Although it was good, the leeks were still not cooked enough for my liking and didn’t look like the photo in the book.

Following the recipe method would have meant the leeks would be almost raw but as I knew I wanted them a little softer I cooked them slowly in the pan for 15-20 minutes on medium heat this softened them but they still weren’t fully cooked and as you only bake them for a further 10 minutes they still don’t come out quite as soft as you would expect. For me, the soup was a much more successful dish – equally in the cooking process and with the final product at the end

Although this book has some lovely recipes, we found the Instructions are quite simplistic and require a bit of guessing, to work out exactly what is meant. We specifically experienced this in the Terrina di Porri recipe where you are required to chop the leeks in half – that is the only instruction before putting them in the pan, however, the photo looks as though the leeks have been thinly sliced, so we did slice them but still weren’t sure if this was what the author had meant. So, I think the trick is to use your instinct in these cases.

Other recipes where this happened included some with onions and peppers where it just says to slice or chop them and doesn’t specify the size. I know most people who buy cookbooks probably know how to cook and can guess how to adapt their recipes but for those who are newer to home-cooking, just be mindful of this. Equally, some of the ingredients were tricky to locate hence why we opted for the leek recipes. Guiliani suggests going to a mediterranean shop or a large supermarket, however, we unfortunately live in the countryside and are around 30 minutes from the nearest large town, so we suggest just swapping out the ingredients for what you can find locally instead.

That being said, the book is filled with some lovely easy-to-make recipes that are great for families. This book would be the perfect gift for a home cook who loves feeding a family from the comfort of their own home. I know of plenty of people this book would have pride of place on their shelf. As well as recipes it’s filled with some gorgeous imagery and insightful stories.

Where can you get your copy of Versatile: Cooking & Living Italian and how much is it?

The hardcover copy of the book is currently retailing for £9.66 on Amazon. This is a discounted price, please check their website for the exact price as this might change.

About the book

Publisher – ACC Editions
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1851496839
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 21.89 x 2.69 x 27.28 cm
Author  Grazia Guiliani

About the Author

Grazia Guiliani has a passion for food and family. Her book has been dedicated to her mother who inspired her love of cooking. Grazia loves entertaining family and friends which is deeply rooted in her Italian heritage. She hopes to inspire the younger generations to follow in her footsteps of food being the centre of family get-togethers. So if you are as passionate about all these things then you will enjoy her cookbook and share a little snippet of her life.

Review by Lex Ward

You may also want to read this:

Recipe Book Review : The British Cook Book by Ben Mervis

Recipe Book Review: Let’s Eat: 101 Recipes to Fill Your Heart & Home

Recipe: Stilton, Leek and Onion Quiche