Brutto: A (simple) Florentine Cookbook - Russell Norman

Russell Norman is one of the people who has changed the perception of Italian food in the UK. ALongside him I should also mention Antonio Carluccio, Franco Taruschio, Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers and Alastair Little. Norman is the youngest of that group and his first big hit was the restaurant Polpo.

His new restaurant in Clerkenwelll is called Brutto and concentrates on Florentine dishes. Brutto is the Italian word for ugly but . . . . it is also part of the phrase brutto ma buono 'ugly but good'. This phrase is often deployed to describe Italian food, the sort that you might find in an Italian family home, rough around the edges  with scant attention paid to presentation . . . but delicious.

The recipes in this book are taken largely from the regional specialities cooked in Florentine restaurants such as Sostanza. The book starts with antipasti such as deep-fried courgette flowers and crespelle and goes on via ribollita and risotto con carne to an archetypal bistecca alla fiorentina. We finish with sweets (florentines, rice fritters and biscotti) and a list of cocktail recipes.

The book has a lay flat binding which makes it very useful to have in the kitchen as it stays open on the correct page!

Hardback. 312 pages

Measurements:

18.1cm x 26.6cm x 3cm