This is Jim Rua’s fourth book in a series of cookbooks written over more than 30 years as proprietor of Albany’s celebrated Café Capriccio. In it he has captured the vibrancy of the food he loves to cook. Simple preparation of fresh, natural ingredients and three decades of experience come together in this volume of brief recipes and appetizing images.
This book is quite possibly unique in the field of cookbooks in that all the photos were taken with a smart-phone camera. Each dish was prepared as part of a meal served at the Chef’s Table, and photos were snapped on the fly—no special lighting, no props.
The guiding concepts of this work, as with others in the series, include a firm commitment to traditional Italian cooking techniques and ingredients. In particular, this small volume illustrates the glorious simplicity of Italian cooking that relies more on ingredients then upon manipulation of ingredients. Somebody once told me that “Italians like their fish to be minimally processed, and to look like a fish on the plate.” Get it?