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| The Silver Spoon | 
 enlarge | Author: Phaidon Press
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Category: Book
List Price: $45.00
Buy New: $28.46
You Save: $16.54 (37%)
New (39) Used (15) from $16.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  157 reviews
Sales Rank: 765
Media: Hardcover
Edition: US
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 1264
Shipping Weight (lbs): 5.9
Dimensions (in): 10.8 x 7.4 x 2.4
ISBN: 0714845310
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5945
EAN: 9780714845319
ASIN: 0714845310
Publication Date: October 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Really nice italian recipe book November 15, 2005
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
I have just received this book and I was amazed by the number of recipes (over 2000) and by the photos. It's a beautifull book perfect as a gift for the holidays!
I 've tried one of the recipe and it was wonderfull .
I would recommend this book to all my friend. I also got simple and simply delicious by Sylvie Rocher with those 2 books I ready for the holiday festivities
Amore! The More The Better! November 14, 2005
4 out of 14 found this review helpful
Husbands do yourself a favor and give this book to your wives (unless you enjoy cooking, then buy it for yourself). Next to the book "Scraps: Adventures in Scrapbooking" this was my spouse's favorite birthday gift.
 END-TO-END BLUEPRINT FOR RECIPES November 11, 2005
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
More than half-a-century after it was originally published as an Italian cookbook, this famed manual has refused to retire. Instead, it has become like wine: the longer it endures, the better it becomes.
As long as the issue concerns Italian recipe, "The Silver Spoon" has no rival. It is the ultimate weapon any cook will have in his or her arsenal: the eternal champion of all cookbooks. The information contained in this 1264-paged heavyweight is inexhaustible. It ramified every aspect cookery: right from the best sources of ingredients to the serving/presentation of the finished menu. And, the entire pages of this U.S. edition remained mindful of the American socio-cultural heritage as they went about their instructive business. No wonder many North American mothers present this book as invaluable gifts to their newly married daughters!
This book even included detailed nutritional analyses in its coverage. Practical information on how to compile a balanced diet to suit individual needs abound in it. Its underlying theme is that tasty food needn't be unhealthy! And to this end, generous elaborations were given to uncountable number of stylish menus. So, you now have a well-designed plan for every meal: be it a quick snack or a three-course meal fit for a king.
"The Silver Spoon" is an essential read for all food lovers; and not just for housewives, professional cooks, or hotel and restaurant managers. It offers end-to-end blueprint for preparing a wide variety of recipes. Very few cookbooks can compete on this level. Its retail price seems quite meager, when compared to the vast information it contains. It is simply in a class of its own!
Beautiful work - a great accomplishment (with a few nitpicks) November 7, 2005
376 out of 400 found this review helpful
_The Silver Spoon_ was originally published in Italy in 1950 by the Italian architectural and design magazine _Domus_. (Italian Title "Il Cucchiaio d'argento." The eighth edition came out in 1997.)The publishers at Phaidon, the British publishing house, have done a remarkable job of translating and designing _The Silver Spoon for American and British cooks. The cookbook combines both traditional Italian recipes, and more contemporary Italian recipes influenced by other cuisines. If I had to make a comparison, I would say that it's much like a Italian version of "The Joy of Cooking," though not nearly as comprehensive.
I have three or four "classical" Italian cookbooks, and many of the recipes in those books are repeated here. I think that I'll hang on to them - but more for the extra information relating to Italian cuisine (which this book lacks) than for the recipes.
The food:
_The Silver Spoon_ is divided into 14 chapters (with a preface):
Eating is a Serious Matter (preface)
Cooking Terms - This chapter is a comprehensive glossary of all of the cooking terms used in the book. It covers terms for ingredients, cookware, and cooking techniques. I especially liked how the authors delineated exactly what they mean for specific terms related to technique; for example, "Brown in a Pan: To cook vegetables over low heat in butter or oil until they go a light golden color. This is particularly common with thinly slice donion or garlic cloves. Meat or vegetables may also be cooked in oil or butter ina skillet over high heat until a rich, even brown in color during the first or final stage of cooking." Equally detailed descriptions are given for everything from "Aceto Balsamico" to "Whisk/Beat". Experienced cooks may find these descriptions unneccesary, but as an amateur, I really appreciated them. The definitions of Italian words "Cacciatore", "Ribollita", etc. are the only indications in the entire book of the origins of any particular dish.
Tools and Equipment - This chapter gives information on the types of cookware necessary for the recipes included, some notes on kitchen organization, and two full-color pages of pictures of the different types of cookware neccessary.
Sauces, Marinades, and Flavored Butters - This chapter includes recipes for nearly every sauce that I've ever heard of - including all of the mother sauces, each with two to ten sauces based on them.
This chapter is divided into the following subchapters:
Hot Sauces
Cold Sauces
Marinades
Flavored Butters ( five pages of recipes for these)
Antipasti, Appetizers, and Pizzas - Include Crostini, Pates, Quiches, Canapes, and many others.
First Courses - Soups, Pasta (fresh and dried), and Rice Dishes
Eggs and Frittata
Vegetables - How to prepare every vegetable under the sun (including some I have never heard of) and salads. The salads chapter seems a bit short, though meat and seafood salads are including in those sections.
FIsh, Crustaceans, and Shellfish - Includes information on serving sizes, cooking techniques, and how to get rid of ligering fish smells in the kitchen. Has seperate subchapters for 32 types of fish, 12 types of shellfish, snails and frogs (5 recipes for frogs alone!)
Meat and Variety Meats - Gives information on Cuts of meat (Both Italian and American) for Lamb, Pork, Beef, and Veal, along with several hundred recipes. Also includes bits on sausages and "Variety Meats", or Offal.
Poultry - The basics (Chicken, Turkey, Duck) with Squab, Capon, and Guinea Fowl also.
Game
Cheese - a short chapter giving first Courses and appetizers using cheese
Desserts and Baking - Gives recipes for every type of pastry imaginable, frostings and sauces, creams, puddings, you name it. An exhaustive chapter. (But nothing on baking bread.)
Menus by Celebrated Chefs - Includes menus with recipes from 23 Italian, Italian-American, and Anglo-Italian Chefs. Includes Lidia Bastianich and Mario Batali. (No Pictures in this section, but plenty more recipes. )
The book contains both a list of recipes by ingredient and a comprehensive index.
The recipes are not direct translations from the Italian - the translators have converted ingredients into imperial units and have written the instructions so that they are more descriptive.I found the recipes easy to read and to understand. For the most part, the writing is concise, but instructions are given in such a way that a person unfamiliar with a technique used can easily complete the recipe - the Italian version was apparently written for more advanced cooks.
The design is very well executed. This is a cookbook to be used, and used often. Aspects of the design that I really appreciated were the different colored edges on the paper for each chapter, so that you might turn immediately to the section that you wish to, and the lack of a dust jacket, which I find to be a nuisance on cookbooks that are to be used often.
This is not a cookbook for people who like anecdotes or pictures. The recipes have no introduction except for their Italian names. The pictures are well done - the food is simply displayed in the pan it was cooked in, or on a white plate on a plain background with out garnishes. The pictures are not labeled clearly (The labels are there, but they are tiny - you really have to look for them.) with the name of the dish. There are several line drawings, from the original, I believe, but they serve a decorative purpose only.
I have several very small nitpicks with the the book: the lack of certain regional dishes that I took to be well-known; The printing is light - I would have prefered a solid black, which is easier to read, than the charcoal grey that is used for all of the recipes; I really would have enjoyed information for at least some of the dishes on where they came from, and information on the differences in the regional cuisines of Italy would have been helpful. This information may have been superfluous in an Italian edition, but would be appropriate in an American one. There is also no section on baking breads, which is very strange for a book that claims to cover the whole of Italian cuisine. There is also no coverage of the history of Italian cuisine.
However, all of these problems aren't worth docking a whole star when one takes into consideration the wealth of recipes included. I have only made a few simple salads, but they've turned out deliciously. The design of the book makes it very easy to use in the kitchen - the binding lays open flat, and includes two ribbons to mark your page, and the text is plain and easy to read. This is going to be a really fun cookbook to use, and I'm sure that I'm going to use it for decades.
Fun as well as practical! November 5, 2005
35 out of 45 found this review helpful
The Silver Spoon's delectable recipes, presented with practical and easy-to-follow preparation advice and serving suggestions, is fun just to read. The suggested menus are a dinner party host's delight, and what a nice gift this would make for a holiday cook!
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