Any recipe that starts with half a pig's head is a good indication that a book may not be for your average home cook. Even though that half-head turns into a tasty-sounding testa, or head cheese, most of us would prefer to buy rather than make such a thing. That's red flag No. 1 for The Babbo Cookbook by celebrity chef and food TV personality Mario Batali.

Here's red flag No. 2. Batali tells us upfront that these are recipes from his restaurant, Babbo, with few concessions to amateurs who may want to cook like him. That means the recipes often call for ingredients that chefs take for granted but that require a full-scale treasure hunt for everyone else. Squid ink, fennel pollen, cardoons, fiddle head ferns, opal basil -- in our marketplace, at least, these are not usual specialty or farmers' market items, much less supermarket fare. That makes the book less than useful for most of us.

But there's a larger red flag to contend with. A number of the recipes don't work. I picked a few of the simpler dishes to make for a small, midweek dinner party, ones that didn't require anything exotic and that did employ straightforward techniques. Still, I started with some big question marks. How could the chunks of butternut squash in the penne with zucca cook in five minutes? And how would you keep the anchovies and onion already in the pan from burning while that happened?

Forgetting that the recipe for mustard-crusted salmon with roasted scallions and pressed beet vinaigrette didn't specify whether the salmon fillets should be skinned or not, how could the mustard-seed crust withstand seven minutes in hot oil without incinerating? And how would the scallion garnish ever caramelize when cooked inside a sealed foil packet?

The answers to those questions are: They won't. You can't. It doesn't. It never will. Needless to say, my little dinner party was not a success, except for the laughter that rang through my kitchen as blackened mustard seeds popped out of the pan all over the kitchen floor. Professional chefs are lucky: Someone else cleans up their kitchens.

If you've ever watched Batali on television or eaten at one of his restaurants, you know he is king of the one-two Italian flavor punch. His food is gutsy and fun -- just the kind of thing you'd like to spice up your culinary vocabulary. Read The Babbo Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 2002, $40) for ideas. But if you want to eat this food, visit the restaurant and consider the book a memento or stick with some of the simpler recipes like this bruschetta.

Tomato and Sheep's Milk Cheese Bruschetta

Serves 4

2 tomatoes, cored, seeded and cut into 1/4 -inch cubes

10 fresh basil leaves, finely shredded

freshly ground black pepper, to taste

4 large garlic cloves, peeled, 1 halved, the other 3 sliced paper-thin

eight 3/4 -inch slices of crusty peasant bread

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

kosher salt, to taste

1/4 pound cacio di roma or other semisoft sheep's milk cheese

Preheat the grill or broiler.

In a medium bowl, combine the tomatoes, basil, black pepper and sliced garlic. Set aside.

Grill or toast the bread for 2 to 4 minutes, until golden-brown. Rub one side of each slice of bread with one of the garlic halves, then brush with some of the olive oil.

Season the tomato mixture with salt, and spoon some of it onto each of the eight slices of bread. With a vegetable peeler, shave cacio di roma over each piece and serve immediately.