Wrapping Up and Up Next

My favorite recipe that I cooked from Meatless is the first recipe that I cooked from Meatless: Maltagliatti with Marinated Heirloom Tomatoes. Looking back, most of the recipes that I liked best were Italian-inspired--either pasta, or simple preparations of standard Italian vegetables (primarily zucchini and tomatoes). Recipes that wandered into any other ethnic realm fell flat from lack of spice. Call me crazy, but if I'm eating Indian food, I want it to taste like Indian food, not like dirt.

I don't feel a ton of excitement when thinking back upon the food I cooked from this book. Stats are only slightly in favor of the Liked it/Loved it camp (8/2) over the Hated It/Disliked/Just Okay camp (3/1/4). A nearly 50% disappointment rate is substantial, however, I'm going to consider Meatless to be a keeper, because I'm always on the prowl for different ways to prepare vegetables. It's definitely not a must-buy, though.

It's occurred to me that I haven't actually gotten rid of a book in quite a while (though I'm tempted to ditch Rachael Ray's Big Orange Book without actually testing it. That seems wrong, though, and so it sits on my shelf, because I can't bear the thought of devoting to it.) It's high time that I cover a book that may well suck, so I've chosen a book that I bought over a decade ago, and have never cooked from: Rome, by Williams Sonoma.

Another reason I want to cook from Rome is because I have more Italian cookbooks than any other ethnicity, and I wouldn't mind thinning them out to make room for other stuff. The problem is, Italian food is just so damn good, unless the recipes veer wildly off course, I can't imagine I won't like them.

A large chunk of Rome is text and photos talking about the city and the food/style of eating, so it's a pretty small, manageable set of recipes to cook from. Let's see how they hold up...