The Silver Spoon- the Ultimate Italian Cookbook

To call The Silver Spoon a cookbook is like calling the Taj Mahal a mausoleum. This is the penultimate cookbook; if you only ever buy one cookbook for your home, this should be the one. Comprised of over two thousand recipes, there is something in it for everyone.

To start, the book has a small blurb on its history, explaining what it is, and why it is so special. This book is the English translation of a book that has been famous in Italy since 1950. It was first published in English in 2005. After the historical information, the book has several important sections. The first is a small guide detailing the different sections. Following that is an extensive glossary to help new and old cooks alike. The last section before you actually get to the recipes is a few pages on cooking utensils and kitchen tools. It is scientifically and practically written, useful even for experienced cooks and invaluable for the novice.

The rest of this sizeable book is devoted to recipes. It is sorted very neatly into sections such as "sauces, marinades, flavored butters", "vegetables", "poultry", and "desserts - baking", which make it very easy to find what you're looking for. They maintain a similar organization within each section, keeping like foods on adjacent pages to save time. The recipes will often call for sauces or stocks, for which recipes are also included in this book, thus reducing your reliance on pre-made varieties.

The recipes themselves are, in a word, mouthwatering. This is truly traditional Italian cooking, rather than the Americanized versions which are available in many restaurants. As such, there is a much wider reliance on olive oil, even in the baked desserts, and a delightful variety of vegetable recipes. Vegetables and herbs feature very widely all through the book, often in combination with heavenly sauces and cheese, which make it a great resource for people looking to get more produce in their diet. It may also be easier to convince children to eat their veggies, when they are prepared so delightfully. My own children, five and three, dive right into the dishes we've tried from this book.

Each recipe is very carefully written with the inexperienced cook in mind. They are highly detailed and descriptive, written in paragraph form rather than in short, numbered lines. There are a great many photographs within the book, all of which were taken using natural light, and many of which occurred while the food was still in the pot in which it was cooked. The finished recipes that we have tried ended up looking very similar to their photographs.

One of my favorite recipes from this book is entitled 'Arabian Lamb.' This is a recipe for roasted saddle of lamb, though when I made it, I used leg of lamb and it came out wonderfully. The ingredients are all easy to find in any major supermarket and, with the exception of a small amount of saffron, inexpensive. The recipe calls for the lamb to be browned and then roasted in the oven, and the directions are very clear and easy to follow. Some of the other ingredients in this dish are honey, almonds, meat stock, olives, and cilantro. The dish, when finished, is a very delicious, stew-like meal and the meat comes out very tender with a delicate flavor. I would make one small change to it, though, and add a small handful of plump raisins to the mix, approximately fifteen minutes before the roast is done.