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A review by brizreading
The Silver Spoon by Clelia D'Onofrio
5.0
I was meditating on adding and reviewing this on Goodreads yesterday at dinner, while I was cooking some chicken legs in red wine (and enjoying it very much!). This is the magisterial Bible of Italian cooking: my nonna, my zie (aunts), and mamma mia (!) all have it. It's giant. It covers everything. It's "authentic" - i.e. it's recognized as the Bible of cooking in Italy, so you won't find abominations like "spaghetti with meatballs" or "alfredo sauce" in it. FALSE GODS.
It's served me very well over the years, especially on the go-to's:
- Tiramisu. I've made this 10+ times, it's reliable and delicious and has a big wow factor at parties. Yo, it's easy, you just need mascarpone.
- Pizza dough. Another good wow factor for parties. Also very handy. Also tasty.
- Bolognese sauce. My husband was shocked, SHOCKED, that only tomato paste (and not sauce) is used in this. Yo, it's alllll meat, dude. Bologna! Famous for meat sauces, being sexually subversive, and being super left-wing! And Umberto Eco, I guess?
- Béchamel sauce, for lasagna and crepes and such. This was always mysterious. It's not so hard.
- Crepes.
- A bunch of chicken dishes.
I'd say the tldr of the book is:
- You can cook anything. If you have some leftover broccoli, the Silver Spoon will tell you what to do with them. (And I can probably guess: it'll be - boil them in salt water, fry in olive oil for a bit, and put some damn delicious cheese nearby. ECCOCI QUA!)
- Italian cooking, like Italian fashion, operates on a small number of simple rules of thumb: the soffritto, salting your boiling water, use cheese, blah blah. It also is HIGHLY dependent on the raw quality of the ingredients. A caprese salad is delicious because the mozzarella is watery-milky smooth. If you use rubbery knock-off mozz, I can guarantee you it will suck. (I have tried.)
- This is also the great tragedy of Italian cooking in America. It does not mix well with Big Food in America.
- Why, I remember moving from Rome to DC in 2003. I wanted to make some stuff. I couldn't find a can of beans in the supermarket that just had BEANS in them. Everything had preservatives, chemical ingredients. There's high fructose corn syrup in places you least expect. There's corn starch everywhere. SO MUCH CORN. It's in your diapers. For the love of God. It's awful. Food that's stripped of its taste, and then has the taste chemically re-injected VIA CORN. I'm tearing my hair out here.
- This is why, I think, American cultural manifestations of "Italian cooking" are two-fold: the low end of false god Italian cooking (Olive Garden, spaghetti with meatballs) - i.e. stuff that doesn't actually exist in Italy - and the high end of $30 prosciutto slices at some snobby restaurant. Both lead me to despair. The high-end places put a premium on the ingredients, and heap great snobby praise on them, but, EEN EETALEE, it's just a way to cure ham!! IT'S JUST HAM.
Food quality should not be only for the rich!!!!!
Anyway. The Silver Spoon. It will guide you well. Invest in the quality of your ingredients (good olive oil, good mozzarella, fresh veg and good meat) if you have the means and you'll be fine. Some stuff is hard to find (I've had trouble with ladyfinger biscuits, mascarpone, some prosciuttos, some cheeses), but Italian delis are in most cities. And most Italian cooking is super easy, with a long tail of complex bizarre stuff. Salt + olive oil = happy.
It's served me very well over the years, especially on the go-to's:
- Tiramisu. I've made this 10+ times, it's reliable and delicious and has a big wow factor at parties. Yo, it's easy, you just need mascarpone.
- Pizza dough. Another good wow factor for parties. Also very handy. Also tasty.
- Bolognese sauce. My husband was shocked, SHOCKED, that only tomato paste (and not sauce) is used in this. Yo, it's alllll meat, dude. Bologna! Famous for meat sauces, being sexually subversive, and being super left-wing! And Umberto Eco, I guess?
- Béchamel sauce, for lasagna and crepes and such. This was always mysterious. It's not so hard.
- Crepes.
- A bunch of chicken dishes.
I'd say the tldr of the book is:
- You can cook anything. If you have some leftover broccoli, the Silver Spoon will tell you what to do with them. (And I can probably guess: it'll be - boil them in salt water, fry in olive oil for a bit, and put some damn delicious cheese nearby. ECCOCI QUA!)
- Italian cooking, like Italian fashion, operates on a small number of simple rules of thumb: the soffritto, salting your boiling water, use cheese, blah blah. It also is HIGHLY dependent on the raw quality of the ingredients. A caprese salad is delicious because the mozzarella is watery-milky smooth. If you use rubbery knock-off mozz, I can guarantee you it will suck. (I have tried.)
- This is also the great tragedy of Italian cooking in America. It does not mix well with Big Food in America.
- Why, I remember moving from Rome to DC in 2003. I wanted to make some stuff. I couldn't find a can of beans in the supermarket that just had BEANS in them. Everything had preservatives, chemical ingredients. There's high fructose corn syrup in places you least expect. There's corn starch everywhere. SO MUCH CORN. It's in your diapers. For the love of God. It's awful. Food that's stripped of its taste, and then has the taste chemically re-injected VIA CORN. I'm tearing my hair out here.
- This is why, I think, American cultural manifestations of "Italian cooking" are two-fold: the low end of false god Italian cooking (Olive Garden, spaghetti with meatballs) - i.e. stuff that doesn't actually exist in Italy - and the high end of $30 prosciutto slices at some snobby restaurant. Both lead me to despair. The high-end places put a premium on the ingredients, and heap great snobby praise on them, but, EEN EETALEE, it's just a way to cure ham!! IT'S JUST HAM.
Food quality should not be only for the rich!!!!!
Anyway. The Silver Spoon. It will guide you well. Invest in the quality of your ingredients (good olive oil, good mozzarella, fresh veg and good meat) if you have the means and you'll be fine. Some stuff is hard to find (I've had trouble with ladyfinger biscuits, mascarpone, some prosciuttos, some cheeses), but Italian delis are in most cities. And most Italian cooking is super easy, with a long tail of complex bizarre stuff. Salt + olive oil = happy.