Italian Easy from London's River Cafe

Italian food has never been so sophisticated and so simple as it is when presented by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers, owners of London’s esteemed River Cafe. This is the fifth “River Cafe” cookbook - the series has a cult-like following - and if you haven’t used these cookbooks yet, once you do you’ll probably want to own them all.

Italian Easy is gloriously illustrated and beautifully designed. Just paging through the book will leave your mouth watering. Gray and Rogers have made an industry of cooking fresh ingredients in uncomplicated ways that bring out their finest, richest tastes. If you live in a place where you can get high quality, seasonal, fresh fruits and vegetables as well as fresh fish and good meat, then the River Cafe recipes will help you make those things taste even better than they already do.

Other cookbooks in the River Cafe series have recipes that are a bit more complicated than those in Italian Easy. But the simple preparations leave out nothing in flavor, and they mean that you’ll have more time to to sit around the table with family and friends because you’ll spend less time in the kitchen.