The last of the Silver Spoon

Well, after 2 months and 30 recipes or so later, I am finished with my run of the Silver Spoon.  The recipes are easy to follow and put together using simple ingredients and in most cases, the food turns out to be complex and delicious.  This was a great way to get some very healthy foods into our family, just in time for the start of the new year and for the new year diet.  When I normally cook food, I cook during the weekend to produce at least one meal for a dinner and one to take to work for lunch.  Both of these meals last half the week.  I then make another two meals on a Wednesday or Thursday for the rest of the week and then restart.  Some of these recipes were made into non-meat meals to help with the diet.

We have a roasted red pepper sauce, meant for pastas.  I made it so my wife could use it on her yam noodles (which have almost no calories themselves.)

This was a mushrooms and prosciutto dish.  It had about 1 and 1/2 pounds of mushrooms and 3 ounces of prosciutto along with garlic and many other yummy things.  I do have to note, that only about 1/10th of the recipes in this book, used garlic.

This was blueberry risotto and while it may look strange, it is not a sweet dish but a savory one.

This was the best dish I had made in while.   This was called Baked Savoy Cabbage.  It is a layer of cabbage, then a layer of freshly cut mozzarella and then a layer of Italian sausage with some freshly ground black sea salt and pepper.  Then the layers continue until you finish with a layer of cabbage on the top.  You then pour a 1/2 cup of cream or in my case, half and half, over it all and it turns into this perfect casserole dish.  As I was telling my son who is studying the food pyramid in kindergarten, this dish has food from the meat, vegetable and dairy food groups all in one serving.  Maybe have a side of the blueberry risotto and you have all 5 food groups at one meal.

This is the last of the Silver Spoon recipes and my time in the book, if you are interested in any of the recipes and you do not want to buy the book for yourself, please let me know.

The Silver Spoon part 3

I wanted to let you know about this and how happy I was about making this dish.  I did the Chicken in Lager recipe from the Silver Spoon book and used the broth and the tender vegetables to make a risotto.  I took all of the broth and placed it in a pot, brought it to a boil and in the other pan, put some of those cooked carrots and leeks in some olive oil and then added a cup of aborio rice.  I played the normal technique of making risotto which is a long task but came out with some meaty, rich and very tasty risotto.

Now, what else did I make out of this cookbook?  Well, to continue my crusade, I made some Brussel Sprouts and almonds:

My wife then had some fake crab meat and she wanted something good, so I made her a cold crab salad.

But what made this salad a good addition to this blog, was the fact that the red sauce on top of this crab salad, was made from a different sauce.  I had to make a Velote' sauce which was basically just a roux and some seafood stock together.

Then I had to make an Aurora sauce, which is a Velote' sauce with tomato sauce added in.  I did that and had this finished sauce where was drizzled on top of this salad.  My wife liked the salad and made a good comparison to the Mexican layer salads of the 1970's.  This salad had a layer of raddichio, hearts of palm, crab meat, and then sliced dill pickles.   

The Silver Spoon part 2

I love the recipes out of the book and thought it would be fun to post pictures and my reviews of the recipes I try from the book.  So, here is part two of this idea.  (If anyone buys the book and wants to cook along with me and tell me how everything went for you, please let me know, my wife thinks this would be an awesome idea.)

So, the way I cook, is that I wait for a nice Saturday or Sunday to come along and after having marked about 5-6 recipes, I cook away.  I cook at least two protein rich dishes, so that one may be used for dinner at home for the next few nights and the other gets taken to work for lunch.  This is what I have made within the past week.

This was listed as a Pizza Napolatana, which was me making pizza dough, then putting some extra virgin olive oil, chopped tomatoes, fresh chunks of mozzerella and then some canned anchovies.  I'm not an anchovy person, but I know I did a good job when my wife eats the whole pizza.

This one was an interesting one, this is cream of lettuce soup.  This had milk and vegetable stock boiling together as the base and then about 6 cups of chopped lettuces were added and then blended together.  It tastes surprisingly good.

There was a recipe for a dish called "chicken in lager".  Basically, the recipe wanted me to boil some chicken in some lager beer, chopped celery, leek and carrot with salt and pepper.  That sounded fine, but I'd rather cook a chicken in my Dutch oven than in a pot any day.  So, I set the oven to 400 F and then placed all of the ingredients as well as some extra beef stock and water to fill it more than half way, so the liquids can get into the cavity of the bird to cook it.  I put the chopped veggies inside and then covered it to cook in the oven for an hour and a half, turning the chicken every 30 minutes.  It finished and looked like this:

The broth that was created was delicious and full of flavor and the meat on the chicken was juicy and fell off of the bone.  Do the recipe the book's way or my way.

This above picture is beets with anchovies.  It is a very simple recipe which has you cooking the beets then dicing them up.  Next you take a can of anchovies and after rinsing them, you place them in a hot pan with some extra virgin olive oil and some red wine vinegar.  You stir them around for what seemed like 2 minutes as they completely disintegrated.  You spoon that fishy mixture on top and then mix it up.  My wife, the anchovy eater, loved the cooked beets and anchovies so this is a good recipe for her or anyone else who loves anchovies.

The last thing I cooked in this week was "lentils with bacon".  What you do is soak the lentils overnight then the next day, pour them into a pot.  This recipe is interesting compared to past lentil recipes which I have tried because this one doesn't have you keep the vegetables.  With this one, you cut the carrots and celery in large chunks so they cook with the lentils and give flavor.  When the dish is finished, you pull the vegetables out and toss them.  The bacon is cooked whole, with the lentils as well and then when it is finished cooking, you take the bacon out, chop it up and mix it back in.  I added chopped onions and kept them chopped instead of whole, as I like the flavor of onions. (I call onions "flavor enhancers" to my kids to help persuade them to eat them.)

Everything that I tried was delicious and as I move along in the cookbook, I will continue to do more pictures and more foods for anyone to see.  I am finding this Italian cookbook, easier to follow and make better tasting dishes than say a Mario Batali 350 recipe cookbook.  (I'm not suggesting that Mr. Batali is not a good Italian chef, only that the layout of this book is simpler for people like me to follow: anyone can cook.) 

The Silver Spoon

Alright, I'm not doing a Julie to Julia thing here as 1) I don't have the time and 2) I don't have the money.  But I purchased this book, several months ago and it has just been sitting in my basement, where most of my books are.

Now, I think I'm a few years late, for as long as this book has been out, there have been hundreds and maybe even a thousand reviews of this book as of late.  It is a massive book, the kind of book that you find in the largest section of the Harry Potter world as the type of book that weighs over 10 pounds on its own. The mere mention of weight makes me wonder how many people have walked around the house with bruised foot tops or toes due to dropping this book.  Ouch.

The book is huge and that isn't a bad thing as it is filled with hundreds and hundreds of recipes from the Italy region.  The book was first published in 1950 and is the most successful cookbook in Italy.  This is real Italian cooking and while you would think I would say that the best part of the book is the pictures, you are wrong.  There are hardly any photos in the book.  What I like the best in the book is the way that it is organized.  Let's say that you open most other books and you have some radishes in your house that you want to cook and can't think of a good recipe.  If you have other books, you look in the back under an ingredient index, if there is one, or look elsewhere and try to find a recipe.  With this book, The Silver Spoon, you go to the "Radish" section and look at the 5-6 recipes starring radishes.  This book is organized by main ingredient which lets you plow through and see everything you want to find.

So, without further adieu, here are some things which I have made and taste really, really good.

This is Sausage Crostini.  This was done by making my own "sausage" with ground beef, parsley, oregano, basil and salt and pepper.  I added the cheese to it and spooned it out on french bread slices.  After 15 minutes in the oven, it was all melty-yummy and worked well together, giving you a taste of sausage and toast.

Stuffed Grape Leaves. What I think is interesting, is that I have grown up within the past few years, making and eating the stuffed grape leaves from Lebanon, of which my wife's family is from.  From a past cookbook on Russia and European cooking, I made a stuffed grape leaf recipe from Turkey.  Now, I made this recipe from Italy.  It is interesting that the Mediterranean countries that have grape leaves, roll them up with something good.  I didn't think this recipe is as good as the Lebanese one, but still very good.

This is listed as a Cauliflower Salad (2), and it is steamed then thrown in a bowl with some olive oil, white wine vinegar, tarragon and parsley.  A nice sprinkling of salt and pepper and that is it.  It reminds me of the simplicity of some French dishes where the ingredients are the star.  It is a good vegetable dish.

This was a turnip greens baked parcel which wanted me to bake some turnip greens, with chopped turnips, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper in the oven in wrapped up foil packets.  The greens were perfectly steamed and tasty.

Lastly, I have some of the Potato and Bacon Pie.  This is a quiche', I believe, as it has a base of eggs and cream (or milk) that encapsulates and cooks around some baton cut potatoes and some slices of bacon and onion.  This was so good that my wife and I were using it for breakfast.

I have decided to cook out of this cookbook for the rest of this year and I will post pictures of the recipes as I cook them.  If you see this book on sale anywhere, buy it!