Reddit reviews The Silver Spoon

I haven't looked at a lot of alternatives, but I bought Into the Vietnamese Kitchen on a whim and haven't been disappointed. Well written and has nice pictures, each recipe has some backstory about its place in Vietnamese cuisine and culture.

For Italian cuisine, The Silver Spoon is often recommended as a cornerstone of Italian cooking, but I found it to be pretty unsatisfying, at least in the translation. Light on technique and a lot of recipes that may be authentic, but aren't something you're ever likely to make (assuming you can even find the ingredients).

What you need to do is two things: First, in all major cities in Germany you can get vegetables delivered weekly directly from a farmer to your home. You pay a set amount of money every week and they send you whatever just finished growing. This way you cook with seasonal goods and you start to eat stuff you wouldn´t normally buy. Second, because you need to know how to cook with vegetables you have never heard of, get this cookbook: Silver Spoon. Its a traditional italian cookbook that covers even the most basic recipes and, more importantly, is sorted by ingredients. Combine both and you will expand your culinary horizon in no time...

My current favourite is quiche in every way imaginable. Start with this:

Get some puff pastry - "Blätterteig" (frozen or refrigerated) and cover the inside of an oven-proof casserole or cake pan. If you got some "Blätterteig" left after that, dont worry, you can use it later...

Now saute some onions, scallions or leek and some bakon cubes and put them in the casserole.

Beat some eggs (3 to 4), add 250 ml cream and one cup (the one you buy them in, not the measurement) creme fraiche, whip that shit, add salt and pepper and some ground nutmeg if you have and pour everything in the casserole.

Now scrape some cheese (Gruyere works best for me) over the casserole and put it in the oven at 180 C until the cheese looks yummy. Let it set and cool for a bit and eat, works best with salad.

In the end it should look something like this

I make a lot of recipes off this book. I find it great, of for no reason other than that it's huge and has a really good index. It sells itself as being the highest selling cookbok in Italy.

Id try this, which I personally like a lot.

In general, I feel that cook books that explain why they do stuff and what are the essential ingredients to a dish and what is optional ("this dish needs the butter or it won't be smooth, but you can change the seasoning") good for learning how to cook.

For essential skills such as knife grips, how to prepare ingredients, and such, that is easier to learn from someone who knows how to do it. Reading about it isnt quite the same thing.

One of the better video blogs out there, IMO, is Foodwishes, check it out on youtube. He explains very well how you can make the food you want with the ingredients you want.

For Italian food, I would recommend The Silver Spoon, it is by far one of the best cookbooks around.

The Silver Spoon is also my favorite Italian cookbook :))

I'm not Italian, but I know Italian-American chefs who swear by it. I've cooked some of the recipes and they were great, however steer clear of the baking section, something happened in the translation or something (at least in the edition I used) because the baking recipes are useless.