A practical guide to cooking Italian cuisine

Our house is full to the rafters with cook books. Books by star chefs, books devoted to regional cooking, beautiful books with far-too-complicated recipes. 

Many of them rarely get looked at because you need all sort of ingredients that are hard/impossible to track down, or three hours of prep. 

Gourmet Traveller magazine is an Australian icon, with many of the country's top chefs contributing recipes that are designed for everyday home cooks. 

Now Gourmet Traveller has released a new book Italian by Gourmet Traveller that celebrates one of the world’s most popular cuisines in a hardcover collection. 

The book brings together more than 100 dishes from leading chefs and the Gourmet Traveller food team, including recipes from Guy Grossi, Stefano Manfredi, Neil Perry, Brigitte Hafner, Andreas Papadakis, Sarah Cicolini and more.

It would be a beautiful - and practical - Father's Day or Christmas Gift. Simple, straightforward and well illustrated. I might find time to try that chicken cacciatore recipe. 

Italian costs $55.99 and was published on August 5.