My sister-in-law is Italian and recommended this to us. It is supposedly the Italian version of the "Joy of Cooking".

This cookbook is awesome! It has recipes listed by ingredients and by course. Each section begins with an explanation of how to care for and cook the ingredient. I have decided this would make a great gift for a housewarming or even a wedding.

This book is full of recipes. I think you could spend a life time trying the different recipes.

Before owning this book, I never realized how few ingredients Italian cooking had in it. I'm still trying to master the simple recipes, but this is a reflection of my cooking skills and not the book.

There are so many cookbooks out there!! It seems that every day a few new cookbooks are published. However, I suppose that this one will stay longer on everyone's shelve. With almost 1300 pages there is something for everyone's taste buds, and for everyone's cooking skills. Considering the size of it, it is very inexpensive - definitely worth the price. For everyone who is interested in healthy foods I suggest Healing Foods for Dummies

An exhaustive approach to Italian cooking. While the instructions are not as clear or detailed as I would prefer, the recipes are often very tasty and appear not to be doctored for mass appeal. Why alter a classic?; there is often not good reason to. The recipe for pesto, my personal bellweather of Italian cookbooks was good, although not the best I've tried. Worth looking into if you want to move beyond basic meats and flavors and explore true regional Italian fare that includes cod, boar, and rabbit.

So with me carrying over my passion for all things Italian. It is only natural it leads me to cooking! I consider myself a novice in the kitchen. I'm 29 and just over 3 months ago I decided the next thing for me to learn is to cook. But I had no desire to cook typical american dinners. So I immediately began learning how to cook italian! I began with Giada, the always lovely Food Network star, and started using my mothers Giada books. I have been preparing nothing but successful dishes once a week using Giada's books. But I started seeing that Giada, really can americanize things. I got bored with her books, and looked elsewhere. I prepare a 3-4 course italian dinner every saturday evening, for my family. About 3 weeks ago I bought this book and swear by it now! I cannot believe as a novice that I'm making dishes like Crema di Zucchine! Lasagna alla Bolognese! Creating sauces like Bechamel, so simple! Those who say that Italian don't know what this book is, lie. Recently the Italian Magazine Oggi was including for a few extra euro each the individual books that make up the italian version of this book, in their weekly magazines. It as a collection of smaller books in Italia. I travel to Italia every year, have eaten at places very chic and modern to the traditional and rustic. IWithin a year i will be transfering to Italia to live and work, and I'm so looking forward to continuing to perfect my italian cooking using the treasure trove of italian cooking!

I collect cookbooks and enjoy them for different reasons, from "go-to" books for recipes to more general theory books. This is hard to categorize; it's more of an encyclopedia than anything. (It's organized like an index, one food at a time). It's clearly Eurpopean, and uses European words and named for food. THe recipes are nothing particularly interesting or creative. THink of it as the Joy of Cooking with big color pictures. After browsing though it for an hour or two, I put it down and never picked it up again. For the price, I would not recommend it as it does not offer anything that better cookbooks offer.

This is a great book for those who are not only adventurous cookers, but for pros as well. This cook book covers ingredients that you have, but don't know what to do with. It's great for those who are part of a CSA that get fruits and veggies that are new and don't know what to do with. I recommend this to everyone who needs some help with dinner variety.

I love cooking and I love simple but tasty recipies. This book maintains this thoughout. I strongly recommend it to anyone. Very worth having.

This book is a gem. If you can't read Italian to use the original that this was based on, then this is as close as you can get to the real thing. I've tried many of the recipes and have not had any problem. There are good pictures and excellent explanations provided.

One thing that puts me off this is that it's too large a tome. The Italian version is broken up into smaller volumes. I would have rather seen the book broken down into sections with more photos of some of the recipes and perhaps photos of some recipes as they were being done. Sometimes just plain textual explanations of recipes doesn't cut it.

I also think that the English version doesn't play off the regional differences, especially when it comes to making pizza since every region, city/town in Italy has their own way of making pizza. I found this to be the same of many of the recipes, and I found that the editors were a bit authoritarian in which recipe they chose.

I give it four stars because it's such a great resource and cannot imagine that translating the original and reworking it for American and British markets was an easy task. Well done!

Having grown up in and around some great kitchens I was amazed at finding this cookbook. I was fortunate enough to have been able to buy a first edition when this came out and have given this book to a few close friends and relatives over the past couple years. All of whom have been amazed with this collection of recipes.

I cannot think of a higher compliment and/or recommendation.

I bought this book for boyfriend because he really enjoys cooking. The book is huge and packed with interesting recipes primarily centered around Italian cooking. Silver spoon also has really great diagrams showing different cuts of meat and various fact and tips regarding herbs and vegetables. I highly recommend this book

I bought this book for my Italian father as a Christmas gift--and have heard nothing but good things from my parents' kitchen since! This weekend I was able to have my first menu prepared from the cookbook and it was fantastic!!

My family recently traveled to Italy and said this is THE cookbook for authentic recipes. While there are some recipes that seem really out there...the book is so extensive and elaborate, I know my family is hard pressed to decide which recipes to try first. The cookbook is the size of an unabridged dictionary...everything from Peas & Pancetta, to an authentic and tasty Bolognese, how can you go wrong?

I would recommend this book again and again...and am very excited to add this to my own collection soon!

I knew the book I have it, I bought it as a present.
For somebody that likes to cook, and likes Italian food, it is very comprehensive.

So far, I've only cooked a few items from this wonderful volume of authentic Italian recipes but every single one has been a winner. The recipes are amazing and written exceptionally well. Although it would be impossible for me to prepare every single recipe, this is a definite keeper.

This is one of my favorite cookbooks, it deserves 5 stars. It's an excellent resource for anything Italian. I purchased 3 copies to give as gifts and was shocked at the way Amazon packed them. They arrived loose and unwrapped in a huge box that could have easily held 10 times as many books. All of the covers were very scuffed. If I had had more time to shop, I would have returned them all.

this book is huge! it was for a gift, but came in great condition ...

The product came fast and it was in perfect condition. It's a beautiful book!

This is by far my favorite cookbook ever. The recipes are easy and delicious. Not only have I purchased it for myself but I've given it to all of my brothers and sisters and culinary friends.

Heads up to the spouses of cooks and food aficionados: This is the cookbook to purchase for them. Makes a great (and easy) holiday gift. Pair it up with some cutesy cutlery and a bow and -- viola -- a successful present.

Good luck and happy eating this holiday season.

/s/
GBH

Hard to believe that there could be anything more you could want from a book that's over 1000 pages long but it's far less instructional than LA BONNE CUISINE, far less compelling and far less convincing that these are seminal recipes traditionally used. There are nice photos but they have no captions. Sometimes there are 3 different recipes that could be represented but you just don't know. If the spine hadn't been bumped at some point before it arrived at my house, I would have turned around and sold it.

The authors/editors converted the typical metric system to cups, teaspoons, etc. without any regard to the recipe. It seriously changed the recipes. I've been reading people's reviews and many have encountered the same problem. It's unacceptable. From that point I give the book a star.
The good part is that is extensive, and gives good pointers. So I give the book two stars. Buyer be aware!
I am going to try a few more recipes. I hope it's not a waste of ingredients and time.

I bought this book because of so many positive reviews. I guess many people like this book or maybe this book is actually great but I am not seeing why. In my perspective, this book is good because it has miraculous number of recipes and they are organized according to topics. It's easy to notice that this is a pretty serious Italian cook book. One thing I don't like about is that the instruction is not very detailed so sometimes you have to figure out how to cook yourself and that can be challenging. And I don't know if it's my cooking talent or not, some of stuff I cooked didn't turn out very good which didn't happen to me with other cook books. So, bottom line is that this book seems to have a status as an encyclopedia of Italian food... It's a good book to learn some ordinary Italian cooking which we have never heard of. It's just that I don't like the fact that the book is not very kind enough to explain how to cook . That's all.

There seems to be a misconception among some English-speaking serious home cooks ("foodies") that this book is an encyclopedic Italian cookbook, which kind of misses the mark. The book is a comprehensive cookbook written by Italians, and so it will contain a fair number of non-Italian dishes, such as nasi goreng (Indonesian), amongside tiramisu, ragu Bolognese, veal alla Milanese. It appears to me the complaint stems from the fact that English-speaking cooks already have other sources to scourge general cooking from (for example, "The New Best Recipes", "The Joy of Cooking", "The Australian Women's Weekly Cook" etc), and thus we expect an Italian-published cookbook talks about Italian cuisine all the time. If we take things from another angle, an Asian cook may well expect "The Joy of Cooking" covering the cuisine of the English-speaking world, thus has nothing but hamburgers, apple pies, American version of lasagna, or pot roasts. Imagine his response when he sees green curry chicken (because it is Thai) or duck a l'orange (because it is French) in the book.

The best thing to treat the Silver Spoon is to chuck away this preconception before reading - there are plenty of excellent works written for English-speaking audiences introducing exclusively Italian cooking, and even though Antonio Carluccio's works may be brief, you can also find relatively masterpiece types of Giorgio Locatelli's "Made in Italy".

In general, the cookbook presents cooking from an Italian perspective so you may find you will end up reading a roast beef recipe and how an Italian approaches it. This often means the cooking is less precisely defined in measurement quantities - I remember cookbooks of Southeast Asian countries' cuisines are like this as well with David Thompson or Terry Tan admitting there are not much literatures of "precise measurements" in Asian cooking but rather, traditionally the food would be prepared "according to feeling". Italian cooking emphasises ease and smooth procedures and I suspect this may contribute to the brief prose.

Even though the book may not be exclusively Italian, the book does cover a lot of most of the common Italian dishes. It is that you may need to have another general Italian food book to discern specific regional specialties from the names. But from what I have read of tiramisu and a couple of other dishes, they appear to be pretty decent.

Some may complain certain dishes may sound anachronistic in the 21st century English-speaking world such as curry stew or Russian salad. Again, this is probably more to do with how we come across food in the English-speaking world in the early 21st century, where as we are spoiled with raw spices, we expect curry family of dishes to be specific Indian or Malay dishes like Kerala fish dishes, lamb korma, or butter chicken, and we are living in a world where we are spoiled with 15 varieties of tomato and lettuce with olive oil and lemon juice dressing as salad on an average restaurant menu in Chicago or Wellington.

Overall, I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in Italian cooking and in particular, how Italians approach cooking.

excellent, subtle Italian hand with food, easy to use, very few arcane ingredients and well translated.

Great cookbook but you have to make local ingredient substitutes. Many innovative and tasty recipies. An excellent source for explanations of foods and spices.Italian like you've never seen italian..........BillKenney

A few people criticized the book in earlier reviews for not providing enough detailed information about how to cook certain recipes. I wanted to point out that this was probably a cultural difference, one that Americans should just get used to if they really want to understand Italian cooking. To show that it really is a cultural difference, i point to two pieces of evidence.

(1) The book itself discusses how they had to increase detail in recipe-presentation for American tastes. That said, you shouldn't complain that its too vague - because this is just how Italians do recipes. (Chances are, they allow for a lot more variation in the outcome than Americans do, btw... if you watch Mario Batali, he notes that every Italian mother has her own version of each dish). The extreme specification of every last detail is a desire of American home cooks.

(2) If you look at the recipes by famous chefs at the end of the book, you'll notice a really funny difference. All of the chefs who are FROM ITALY provide directions for recipes that take up only 1/2 a page each. All of the chefs who are NOT FROM ITALY provide directions for recipes that take up the whole page. (The ones from the U.S. - Lidia Bastianich and Mario Batali are the best examples of this). This should be a good sign to everyone that it's a cultural difference that you should try and co-opt rather than reject, if you're trying to understand Italian cooking as a whole.

This book is a treasure trove of delicious treats. The overwhelming number of recipes is countered by an efficient cataloging system, making it simple to find precisely what you wanted. The addition of famous chefs' sample menus is an added bonus that makes this book truly unique. I highly recommend The Silver Spoon to anyone who wants to explore the delights of the kitchen: from novice to pro, this book takes the cake.

Great book, really excellent recipes applicable to the beginner up to advanced cooks. However, the book really doesnt describe techniques for preparing the food which are really needed in the american market. As an example there are several recipes for squid and cuttlefish but no cleaning techniques which can complicated. I highly reccomend this book as a standard part of your cooking library, it is truly a goldmine of recipes, sort of an Italian Betty Crocker cookbook on speed.

This is a mammoth collection and many recipes sound terrific. A few problems, though.

What REGION claims the recipe? Italians are tied to their family regions. This information belongs in the recipes.

AMERICAN VERSION OF ITALIAN INGREDIENTS. What type chilies or lettuce, for example, would make the recipes as close to authentic as possible?

PICTURES. There are beautiful pictures of prepared recipes. There are no captions for the pictures, and sometimes, the reader can't guess which recipe on the facing page is pictured.

I'm enjoying using and reading this book, but I wish the publishers had done a little more editing for the U. S. market.

Needless to say, I LOVE Italian food. When I went on the SouthBeach Diet, I was terrified - a limitation on carbs meant no more pasta! However, this book provides SO MUCH outside the range of normal pastas that I can still enjoy great Italian food without compromising my diet. A definite winner!

Been wanting this cookbook for a while. Finally found it at a great price. It's even better than I thought it would be.

book was great would suggest to buy new instead of used or buyer beware, made a great gift!!

A fantastic book! Great recipes covering a wide range of foods. Even several for sweet breads. It will take several years to work through all that is offered.

This is the ultimate encyclopaedia of Italian cooking. All those famous, delicious dishes from the very simple to the most intricate ones can be found in this Bible-sized volume. Precious is also the bottom-up approach. All ingredients and special kitchen tools are explained in detail as well as particular ways of preparing ingredients. The recipes themselves are presented in a clear, easy to follow layout. Topped up is this compendium with menu suggestions by renowned chefs so that throwing an Italian dinner party is within the reach of even the less proficient home cook. The only drawback is that imperial measurements are used only, which just doesn't look right with Italian recipes. I've overcome this with a self-made bookmark that gives metric equivalents to ounces, pints, and the other medieval units of measurement. If such a bookmark would have been supplied with the book I'd rated it 5 stars.

This book is mammoth! Beautiful and simply designed, it is a joy to page through. It will take me an entire lifetime to get through it all, which I will probably never be able to do...though I'll try.

Nearly every classic Italian recipe you can think of is in here, and looking through them you'll be shocked at how simple they all are. It's amazing to compare these recipes to the same dishes in other "Americanized" cookbooks that "overly complicate" things by adding extra ingredients, etc. Cooking doesn't have to be organic chemistry, and the simplicity and beauty of Italian cuisine really shines through in these recipes.

My only complaint is the English translation, which in many cases fails to convert metric units to English units. More pictures of the dishes would have been nice, too, since I'm not familiar with a great deal of them.

Classic Italian Recipes finally translated into English. The recipes include game meat as well as the classic hearty Italian dishes.

Classic Italian Recipes finally translated into English. The recipes include game meat as well as the classic hearty Italian dishes.

FIRST OF ALL THE SERVICE WAS EXCELLENT. BOOK ARRIVED VERY QUICKLY AND IN PERFECT CONDITION. IT IS SUCH A GOOD BUY AND I AM SURE I AM GOING TO ENJOY IT FOR MANY YEARS TO COME. I WOULD EVEN RECOMMEND IT AS A PRESENT TO SOMEONE WHO ENJOYS COOKING. THE RECIPES ARE FANTASTIC AND AT THE SAME TIME EASY.

The recipes are typically short, easy to follow, and delicious. I highly recommend it!

Up there with Marcella Hazan's Cucina Italiana, The Silver Spoon is a must-have for any library on Italian cuisine, now that it's available in English in the U.S. This hefty book covers regional recipes from all over Italy, not just the red-sauce cooking that many people here associate with Italian cooking, rather than Italian-American cooking.

i own tons of cookbooks but this one is in a league of its own..
covers everything edible from rabbits to sauces to icecreams to salads.. you name it, its in there.
you would simply be mad not to love it.

Ok, so maybe the book is not as well-known in Italy as the Joy of Cooking is over here. But that may have more to do with the fact that no respectable Italian I know would admit to owning a book like the JoC, since this is the stuff your mother is supposed to have taught you. And since my mother was not Italian, but English, I think this book is awesome.

And I am GLAD there's no long stories and histories of dishes--I have no time for that. Almost every recipe is boiled down to its essentials, giving simple and quick instructions. If you want a history of Italian regional cooking, this is not for you.

However, if you are someone with little time but with a great appetite for new recipes and combinations of ingredients you had never thought of, this is for you (Fried eggs on eggplant? Pork chops and blueberries and honey? The list goes on. And if they are not 100% Italian, as one reviewer notes, frankly, my darling, I don't give a damn.) These are really original recipes, even though I have had my share of Italian cooking (with a sister married to an Italian and living in Florence for years).

The recipes are listed by ingredient, which is great: if you want to eat eggplants, you get (almost) all the recipes in one place. Note that the ordering follows the Italian names of ingredients, so this is a chance to learn the original terms and read Italian menus (otherwise, there is the index of course).

So, yes, no intricate lessons in techniques, shortcuts introduced, complex procedures avoided, and tiny titles close to the binding for the pictures, (look hard, they're there)--but awesome results. We report, you decide!

Every cook should have several good cookbooks that they rely on regularly. In my kitchen, the Joy of Cooking and several Julia Childs books on mastering French cooking are among my favorites. Now I include the Silver Spoon. It's easy to follow and also provides inspiration to your own creations. If you want to prepare an elaborate Italian meal you will not want to be without this book. Or, if you want ideas for duck or fish or whatever, you can find hints and create your own culinary masterpiece.

2 years ago i received the Silver Spoon as a gift to add to my extensive cookbook collection, it is among my top 3 out of many....it is outstanding and you can try a recipe for the first time and serve to guests in confidence without a trial run beforehand......the recipes are not complicated and that is key.....a GREAT item!!my recent purchase was for a wedding gift.

This cookbook is outstanding. It not only gives you great recipes, but gives you the definition of words (foods, terminologies, etc) you may not understand. It is great for the beginner and expert cooking enthusiast. Perfect gift for that chef in your family.

This book is THE book when it comes to Italian cuisine. It is easy to read, has great illustrations and hundreds of recipes. If you're a fan of Italian food, this is the book to buy, and for that price, you just should not let it pass.

I love this cookbook and use it all the time. I highly recommend it.

At first I didn't think the Silver Spoon recipe book was much to look at and I was disappointed it wasn't the kind of cookbook you can curl up on the sofa and read (like a Nigella Lawson cookery book). However, it is a wonderful cookbook and I have been recommending it to all of my friends. The recipes are well-organized, simply written and delicious. I have made three dishes to date and they have all been beyond our expectations. I like the editorial content as well: the beginning of the cookbook discusses utensils and cooking terms and the end of the book includes suggested menus by notable chefs. In between the book is organized by food type: sauces, pastas, first courses of fish, first courses of salad, and then type of vegetable or cut of meat. I can clearly see why it is known as the Italian cooking bible. Be warned: this is real Italian cooking here, not a collection of pizzas, parmigianas and meatballs. This is true Italian cooking, the type we enjoyed when we met up with a friend in Milan and she took us to her favorite local restaurant.

This has been a nice addition to my cookbook collection (kept in a well lit curio). I've used it as a reference on a couple of occasions, and it has not disappointed. It should be a staple in any home.