Some Serious Food

Categories: Cookbooks

The Silver Spoon is the classic how-to cookbook given every Italian bride.   Originally published in 1950, it has been updated and finally translated into English to meet the insatiable demand for Italian cookbooks in this country.  Not a light read by any means (my six-pound copy almost broke my kitchen scale), this is a compendium of recipes that ranges from simple salads to ostrich stew.

This bible of Italian housewives has over two thousand recipes arranged by courses and then type of food.  There are lots of pasta, vegetables, fish and meat recipes along with a wide variety of wild game.  Interestingly, the authors distinguish between rabbit and hare.  Rabbit is domesticated and hare is the same as our jack rabbit, a wild little critter.

The recipes are short and sweet; there is no long treatise here on how the local cooks prepare their wild boar or any of the travelogue style that you often get with ethnic cookbooks.  The photos lack the high styling found in most modern books and the illustrations are rather whimsical, though the page showing a cute little calf and the different cuts of veal (American butchers don't do the same cuts of most meats, it seems) was kind of off-putting.

But this is really what home cooks in Italy use when mom or grandmother isn't around to instruct. It may not be a big glossy coffee table book, but anyone serious about Italian cuisine owes themself a look at The Silver Spoon.    As the introduction says, "Eating is a serious matter in Italy."