Filled with Icy Passions

Pamela Sheldon Johns has built a cottage industry out of the kinds of books most people would kill to get a chance to write. In the last three years, she has published cookbooks on Neapolitan pizza, Parmigiano cheese, gelato and balsamic vinegar.

The most recent is the ice cream book (“Gelato!: Italian Ice Creams, Sorbetti and Granite” [10-Speed Press; “$17.95]) and it is typical. “Gelato!” is a very small book, about 50 recipes, and it is very beautiful, with alternating color dish shots and evocative black-and-white location pictures. It is very specific and it does what it intends to do fairly well.

It’s not until Johns moves to a larger scale, as she did in last winter’s “Italian Food Artisans” (Chronicle Books, $24.95) that you begin to notice a peculiar hole in her work. Oddly enough, given the subject matter and the obvious love she feels for it, what is missing is a sense of passion. Though Johns is expert at marshaling resources to give historical and technical descriptions of the products she discusses, what gradually dawns on you is that at no point does she actually tell you what they taste like.

At one point in “Gelato!”, she mentions a gelateria that specializes in pistachio. She relates that it makes two kinds: one a natural drab green, the other an artificial vivid green. She says the second is made with a base of pasta reale, a blend of marzipan and artificial coloring. She says the two brothers who own the place disagree about which sells the most. But the only thing she says about their flavors is that the natural one tasted “like a creamy mouthful of aromatic pistachios.” Certainly a little more description and a comparison of the second type might be in order.

Still, this lack comes more under the heading of a curiosity rather than a disqualification. The information is good and the recipes look fine. Certainly, the books are pretty enough to give as gifts. The reader has, however, the sense of an opportunity missed. Here is a writer who clearly understands her subject and has deep regard for it. But at the crucial moment, she just can’t quite break loose with the words to praise it.