Nick Stellino's Passione: Pasta, Pizza and Panini

Joining such luminaries as Wolfgang Puck, Alice Waters and Evan Kleiman, Stellino (Nick Stellino's Family Kitchen, etc.) adds to the robust subcategory of Italian cookbooks featuring pizza and pasta with this thoroughly engaging collection of traditional and new recipes. An updated Pasta with Mortadella Sauce is all the more appealing because Italian mortadella is at last available in this country. He offers two dozen dishes utilizing fresh pasta dough, including Shrimp-Filled Half-Moons and a richly ravishing Tortellini with Smoked Salmon and Creamed Tomato-Caper Sauce. For the fresh pasta itself, he presents a trio of recipes for small, medium and large batches. A charming boyhood story of his father's improvisational bread gnocchi precedes his own adaptation of Bread Gnocchi with Tomato Sauce. Among the rice dishes is the sublime blending of tastes in Risotto with Fennel, Pancetta and Parmesan. Stellino's pizzas are enticements with flair: Baked Pizza Rolls with Sausage and Ricotta are cigar-shaped temptations and Stuffed Pizza with Radicchio, Prosciutto and Camembert is perfect for a special occasion. Panini are as varied as Lamb Meatball Sandwiches with Minted Tomato Sauce and Hamburgers Italiano made with pepperoni, hot Italian sausage, ground lamb and ground veal. Long a favorite TV chef, Stellino will widen his audience with this book and with his latest PBS series, which began in September. (Nov.)