Books : The Silver Spoon

Rating: - Excelento
Never mind the Italian part. This is an allround Grade A1 book. It does contain practically all the info you'll ever need in a kitchen. It is a reference book. It is a recipe book. It is dirt cheap with perhaps 5-8000 recipe's (who's counting?). And it gives recipe's to practically everything you can find attached to animals or plants.
My girlfriend is a qualified cook from one of the snaziest French restaurants in Copenhagen. She can make sauces that makes cracks in the porcelain, and she agrees 100 per cent.

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Rating: - Must have...but could be improved
The silver spoon is a mine of recipes, some having ingredients you might never have considered (like brain!). The recipes are simple and there is bound to be something in there you will like :)

however one bad thing i have to point out is that the contents page could be more detailed because of the size of this book. Also the index is confusing as it goes from english to italian in places and some recipes are indexed twice (once in english and again in italian)

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Rating: - Does not live up to the hype.
An Italian friend advised that I buy this book if I want to cook authentic Italian food. They raved over it. I was so keen to try some of the recipes. I have cooked at least 10 different recipes from this book and, unfortunately, have found them to be quite bland. One minestrone recipe I had to throw away - It was so flavourless and I was not able to rescue it. I will persist though as there are over 2000 recipes in this book and so odds are that there have to be some good ones. However, based on my current experience, I would NOT recommend this book. I would, however, recommend "100 ways to be pasta" - written by 2 women who run an Italian restaurant in Italy - scrummy!!!!

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Rating: - The only cook book you will ever need
Forget the only Italian cook book you will ever need - this is the ONLY cook book you will ever need.

The best thing is that it shows you the basics on how to cook everything. It is especially good for vegetables giving them a totally different slant to what we are used to here in the UK.

Actually it is the best book I've ever bought !

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Rating: - Italian cooking bible
This is really the only book you need if you want to learn to cook Italian food. Many of the recipes are very simple, which I think is the essence of Italian food; fresh ingredients, simply prepared. The syle is very matter-of-fact, which makes the more complicated dishes seem a lot less intimidating. It's also very easy to find every recipe you want.