'Slow food' movement started in Italy

It's not for nothing that the "slow food" movement started in Italy. This movement was founded, as the organization's Web site (slowfood.com) puts it, to counter "fast food and fast life." Classic Italian food is often of the "slow" kind. Think of pots of luscious ragu, polenta and osso buco (veal shanks), simmering for hours on the stove. It follows logically, then, that the slow cooker is an excellent vehicle for cooking Italian.

That was Michele Scicolone's reasoning when she wrote "The Italian Slow Cooker" (2010 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Scicolone - best known for her "Sopranos Family Cookbook" - says she got the idea while inhaling the aroma from a batch of beans set to simmer in a container set in a small brick alcove above a wood-fired stove in a restaurant in Rome. "This is the original slow cooker!" she thought. And her book was born.

To be sure, Scicolone takes on many dishes that are not traditionally "slow cooked" - fish, for example, and frittatas (Italian omelets). Like many slow-cooker books, this one also includes recipes for desserts (flourless chocolate cakes, puddings, cheesecakes). But these seem extraneous. The heart of the book - and what makes it a gem for the home cook - is in the deeply flavored, long-cooked dishes from the classic Italian repertoire. Making a frittata in an hour in a slow cooker saves no time and, in my opinion, does not improve the final product. Making chicken cacciatore (the Chicken with Peppers and Mushrooms below) does both.

Some slow-cooker tips:

• No peeking! Every time the lid is lifted, it takes 20 minutes for the cooker to regain proper temperature.

• Remove leftovers from the slow cooker and cool, cover, and refrigerate or freeze as soon as possible.

• Do not reheat cooked food in the slow cooker.

• Completely thaw any frozen meat or poultry before using to avoid extending the cooking time.

• Marialisa Calta is the author of "Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the American Family" (2005 Perigee). More at marialisacalta.com.