Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Easy to use and simple to read, many of these recipes come from ten years of Molto Mario television programs, including Mediterranean Mario, Mario Eats Italy, and Ciao America with Mario Batali. Batali's distinctive, often humorous, voice provides a historical and cultural perspective to demystify the more elaborate Italian dishes. He also shows ways to shorten or simplify everything from purchasing good ingredients to prepare-ahead tips. Informative headnotes offer up enticing bits about the provenance of the recipes as well as fascinating facts regarding Italy and its cuisines.

Molto Italiano features dishes from many of the twenty-one regions of Italy and many side dishes, each of which can be served as a light meal. With a section on desserts and a foundation of basic recipes, Molto Italiano is the only Italian cookbook a home cook's shelf needs.

Highlights from Molto Italiano:

• 67 antipasto recipes, with special sections for vegetable, seafood, and meat antipasti
• Informative sidebars, where Mario provides background color about the recipes, including the places, people, and history behind various dishes
• More than 50 pasta recipes, from classic comfort food like Baked Ziti to an elaborate Ricotta Gnocchi with Sausage and Fennel
• A wealth of seafood, fowl, and meat recipes, featuring simple everyday dishes and tasty regional specialties
• 34 vegetable recipes that can be served as either antipasti or side dishes
• A comprehensive dessert section, filled with gelati, crumbly cakes, fruit tarts, pies, and more

Average Customer Rating:

Classic Molto	Customer Rating:
Classic Molto - great recipes for everday, many great soup recipes as well as regional Itialian fare. My husband really enjoys this book.

Huge let down!

Customer Rating:

I love Chef Batali's TV show and I have lived in Italy on and off for years, so I was really looking forward to this cookbook. I've tried enough of the recipes now to call it quits! Fettuccini al Liimone with red onions and 3 jalepeno peppers?? It seems like the Chef allowed someone else to create a book and use his name, such is the discrepancy between the obvious knowledge of regional Italian cooking this chef possesses and the awful recipes in the book.

Good; but not quite great.

Customer Rating:

Were do I begin. I guess that first I will say that I love Mario batali. His recipes are great and come close to "just like grandma used to make". The only disappointing thing that i find is that the description of the cooking processes(as well as times and yeilds) somtimes leave a little to be desired. If your a fan of his shows "Molto Mario" you now that he goes into great detail about the most important parts of the cooking process. This book doesn't really do that. For example taking the lasagna bolognese recipee (which is fabulous). You need beciamella at 3.5 cups (this i believe is the right amount maybe you can go as little as 3 cups) but the recipe in the book says it yeild 3.5 cups from only 3 cups of milk (if you look up mario recipe on food tv he uses 4 cups of milk and says it only yeilds 3 cups) so somthing is wrong there. Then on the bolognese sauce, again amazing recipe. But, if you look uo his wine spectator video (uses a little diferent recipe) but watching the technique and browning the meat, just isn't descrobed well in the recipe, but is of extreme importance. he doesn't actually finish the meat until an hour into it pushing the cooking time to a 2.5 hour mark instead of the 2 hour mark in the book. I blieve the yeild here was different as well but i didn't actually measure out the sauce. Next the lasagna call for 2.5 pound of dough. Which would be 2 batches of dough I only made 1 becasu I wanted only 1 9x12 pan of lasagna (the recipe says it would make 2. the dough recipe was right on my yeild was exactly as it should be 1.25 pounds. So I now had dough for 1 pan but sauce for 2 pans of lasagna. Lol rolling the past to the thinist setting i got enough dough for over 1.5 pans, it would have probably been close to the 1 pan but i only did 4 layers (as i ran out of sauce). Asumming that there should have been enough sauce for 2 pans i was putting very thing layers ( i shouls have half the left over after all). anyway, in doing it again it seems to me that it would make a good sigle 9x12 with 6-7 layers. not the 10 x 20 or 2 9x12 the book would advertise. so be cautious of the yeilds and the cook times. that being said the recipes are great.

Great cookbook. One of the best!	Customer Rating:
For as complicated as some of the recipe names sound, don't be put off. Most of them are simple, easy to prepare, and easy to acquire ingredients. Really great flavors, and terrific meals to serve to family or guests. Highly, highly recommended!

Perfect birthday gift	Customer Rating:
My husband is the cook in the family, and has wanted Mario's "Molto Italiano" cookbook for a long time. It came in time for his birthday, and he loves the basic Italian & country-style recipes. He has already tried the spaghetti sauce which we loved and is ready to try more. J. Hahn