Cookbook review: Giada De Laurentiis, more than a TV star

As the host of what must be a half-dozen cooking shows on the Food Network, Giada De Laurentiis has proved herself to be a warm and vibrant personality.

Fortunately, she turns out to be a pretty good cook, too, as she shows in her fourth cookbook, "Giada's Kitchen."

This time around, she is creating what she calls new Italian favorites. Some of these are creative versions of standard Italian dishes such as osso buco, which she makes with turkey, and chicken scaloppine, which she serves with a saffron cream sauce.

Other dishes are less traditional and hers alone, such as Panini with Chocolate and Brie. Think about that -- creamy cheese and semisweet chocolate (and thinly sliced basil leaves) heated and pressed between olive oil-brushed sourdough bread.

"I could eat this sandwich every day for the rest of my life and never get tired of it," she writes. We could not bring ourselves to try it, precisely because we were afraid that if we did we would want to eat it every day for the rest of our lives. Which would be considerably shortened, but presumably much happier.

We did try the Chicken with Balsamic Barbecue Sauce, which adds almost sweet balsamic vinegar to the classic combination of ketchup, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce and Dijon mustard, basted over chicken on the grill. The result was, as promised, sweet and tangy -- and delicious.

It was not, however, even remotely Italian. It's American barbecue that happens to be in a book with the subtitle "New Italian Favorites." The word in the subtitle is as close to Italian as this barbecue gets.

And there is another thing: It sure makes an awful lot of sauce. Her recipe produces about two cups of barbecue sauce, which she thinks should be used for just the one dish. A small person could do the backstroke in that much sauce, but she wants it spread over a single chicken.

We also made the Penne with Eggplant Purée, which is marvelously earthy and satisfying. You roast eggplant, cherry tomatoes and garlic together with olive oil, salt and pepper, purée it all with fresh mint and more olive oil, add pasta water until it is the consistency you want, sprinkle with toasted pine nuts and grated Parmesan cheese and serve over penne.

It is every bit as good as it sounds.

The recipes may not all be precisely Italian, but they are flavorful and innovative enough to make "Giada's Kitchen" worthy of consideration.

Giada's Kitchen

Pages: 240