Proprio Italiano: Authentic Northern Italian Menus and Recipes

The pleasures of Italian kitchens are so substantial that even with crowded shelves there always seems reason to add more cookbooks. Italian-born Coruccini's collection of recipes rings authentic, yet contemporary and original. She pairs cannellini beans with as unlikely an herb as fresh mint, and recommends roasting a buttery fillet of beef tenderloin after it has been coated in crushed black, white, green and rose peppercorns. Her pasta salad (``Italians prefer dried pasta, as do I,'' she writes) is loaded with vegetables, dressed with herbs and sparingly sprinkled with olive oil. She serves pasta in a feathery-light (and still savory) salmon sauce. In a more conventional vein, she includes a Lombardy-style Christmas feast, with instructions for creating the traditional Monte Bianco dessert of crisp meringue crowned with a rich chestnut puree. Throughout, practical methods spur time-saving advance preparation. One hopes that casual readers won't be deterred by the amateurish, outdated color photographs that dot and mar the book. (Nov.)