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DIRECTIONS

Wrap each mozzarella ball in a half-slice of prosciutto. Thread each skewer with a mozzarella ball, tomato and bread cube. Arrange the skewers on a platter. Drizzle the skewers with oil and sprinkle with cheese and basil.

Makes 8 servings.

(Recipe from Mary Ann Esposito’s “Ciao Italia Pronto!”, St. Martin’s Press, 2005, $27.95.)

ARTICLE

DURHAM, N.H. – Mary Ann Esposito charts an unusual tack when pushing her latest cookbook.

“This isn’t the book I wanted to write,” the host of “Ciao Italia,” Public Television’s longest running cooking series, said recently of her just released “Ciao Italia Pronto!” “But this is what people want, 30-minute meals.”

She’s even a bit dismissive of the whole need-for-speed cooking genre.

“Our life today is about two things, the same things as the Romans – bread and the circus,” said Esposito, who has been bringing Italian cooking to television viewers for 17 years. “Feed me and entertain me.”

So why buy her latest book, which promises more than 70 “30-minutes Recipes from an Italian Kitchen”? Because it’s good.

Because she’s right. Because it might just be the start of something better.

Esposito’s initial reluctance to enter the quick-cook arena clearly gave way. But rather than pander to the latest culinary trend, “Ciao Italia Pronto!” (St. Martin’s Press, 2005, $27.95) is an attempt to tweak it from the inside.

Bustling about the kitchen of her New Hampshire home, onions sauteing in one pan, a roast searing in another, vegetables to be chopped on the cutting board, Esposito lamented the state of American cooking.

It’s a strange dichotomy, she said. Food television, magazines and books have never been more popular. Yet so many people have lost touch with where food comes from, lack even basic kitchen skills and eat woefully inadequate diets.

Pressed for time, families have abandoned eating together and home-cooked has come to mean microwaved, she said.

“I think the whole reason cooking shows are so popular is because people don’t cook,” she said. “People say, ‘Wow, that looks like a good dish. Maybe I’ll make it someday, even though I have no intention of ever doing it.”‘

Somehow our priorities have become confused, Esposito said as she hefted the roast with metal tongs and flipped it to sear another side. Europeans celebrate food and its social nature; Americans treat it as a nuisance to be expedited.

So why contribute to it? Why add yet another volume to the mountain of 30-minute meal books?

Because Esposito is an optimist who believes in the power of good food. Maybe if people realize how easy, how fast and how inexpensive real food, good food can be, maybe they will come back into the kitchen, she said.

“You can have gourmet food in your kitchen. You just don’t know it,” Esposito said. “The twenty-somethings and early thirty-somethings have never been taught to cook. You have to start from scratch and that’s what this book is about.”

She makes a good case. It’s just 10:30 a.m. and on the stove two meals are cooking – a pot roast with vegetables and a meatball soup. The roast is that night’s dinner, the soup is for the next day. She’s been cooking 10 minutes.

It’s all about thinking ahead, she said. Figure out what will be needed for several meals, then prep ahead of time as much as possible. The soup and roast both need chopped vegetables, so she does them all at once.

The roast won’t go into the oven until afternoon, but she seared it now because she had the time. Later, when her day is busier, she can toss it in the oven and let it cook. Same for the soup.

Thinking ahead also means keeping a well-stocked pantry, a tactic Esposito expounds on at length in her book. Keep the cupboard, refrigerator and freezer full and quick meals can be had any time.

It’s an approach that works as well for daily dinners as for holiday meals. She laughs at how stressed people get at the holidays when, after a year of takeout and microwave dinners, they find themselves staring down a dozen hungry relatives.

“Every day is Thanksgiving in this kitchen,” she said, gesturing around her. “You’ve got to think ahead. What are you doing Saturday? Make an apple pie and put it in the freezer.”

Esposito is more than talk. “You’ve got to take some cookies with you,” she said, opening her pantry freezer and pulling out bags of Christmas cookies tied with ribbons. “They’re as good frozen as fresh.”

There’s a lot to like about Esposito’s new book, not the least of which is that it doesn’t have that slick informercial feel so many speed-feed cookbooks suffer from.

Flipping through classic dishes – Neapolitan potato pie, chicken marinated in lemon juice, olives and rosemary, spaghetti with tuna, capers and lemon – readers rightly feel this is Italian that happens to be fast, not fast-food Italian.

One complaint. Despite the book’s premise, not all of its recipes can be made in 30 minutes. The chocolate and walnut biscotti will be closer to an hour. Ditto on the polenta, and the eggplant and zucchini casserole clocks in at about 45 minutes.

But it’s easy to forgive. Esposito’s recipes are appealing (for example, creamy walnut pasta sauce, dates stuffed with Parmesan cheese and nuts, skewered tomatoes with prosciutto-wrapped mozzarella) and easy. And her heart is in the right place.

“Cooking is not considered fun, but what are the great joys in life? Number one, being alive. Number two, enjoying food,” she said. “I’m hoping (this book) will get people off the couch and into the kitchen and see how easy it is.”