A BELLA BELLA WAY TO ENJOY MORE VEGGIES

Book taps into rich tradition of plant-based Italian cooking

Every summer, when eggplants are at their peak, I make the same perfect dish from The Silver Spoon: parmigiana di melanzane.

The pages — 514 and 515 — now stuck together with splatters, are really just a handful of ingredients. But the dish epitomizes how, at the right moment, absolute greatness can be found in a combination of eggplants, tomatoes, basil, olive oil, Parmesan and mozzarella.

Phaidon originally launched the English-language edition of The Silver Spoon in 2005.

An Italian classic featuring more than 2,000 recipes, Il cucchiaio d’argento (The Silver Spoon) was first published in 1950 by Editoriale Domus — publisher of the design and architectural magazine of the same name.

When Emilia Terragni, publisher of Phaidon, was growing up in Como, Italy, it was the only cookbook in her family’s kitchen.

“The Silver Spoon is almost like a reference book,” says Terragni. “People in Italy, they don’t follow recipes line by line. They just want to make sure what they’re doing is right, but the recipes somehow are in each family’s DNA.”

In the intervening 70 years, the Silver Spoon kitchen has continually updated the tome, travelling the length of Italy gathering and testing regional recipes.

Terragni has copies of Il cucchiaio d’argento from the 1960s, 1980s and 2010s.

When we spoke, still in lockdown in London, she had been using the books regularly and had just made an onion focaccia from one of the latest titles, The Vegetarian Silver Spoon (2020).

She attributes their enduring appeal to the quality of the recipes.

Designed for the home cook, they’re well tested, the ingredients are largely affordable, and the techniques are straightforward and clearly explained. And while the series is rooted in tradition, The Silver Spoon “is still a living book in Italian culture.”

Merging the classic with the current, this evolution is central to The Vegetarian Silver Spoon. In line with an increased interest in plant-based eating, it feels new while simultaneously tapping into a wealth of time-honoured Italian dishes built on grains, legumes and vegetables.

“If you look at traditional Italian food, plant-based is both traditional and contemporary,” says Terragni.

“Italy was a very poor country for a very long time. The consumption of meat and fish was just a Sunday treat. If you think about the basic ingredients and recipes of Italian cuisine, you have pasta. You have tomatoes. You have olive oil and you have plenty of seasonal vegetables.”

Recipes adapted from The Vegetarian Silver Spoon (Phaidon, 2020)