I'm translating a recipe (to Italian) and I want to express an amount of about a tablespoon. Is it cucchiaio da tavola (a literal translation which I thought meant a serving spoon) or is there another expression for cooking purposes ? (we are getting into the area of exact/inexact measurements recently touched on in the Food forum about Jamie Oliver's nob of butter/ noce !)

Legga qua ed anche qua

My dictionary uses cucchiaiata for tablespoonful.
I do not know how cooks convert but you may go metric. The following is approximate:
By volume (wet or dry I guess), 1 tablespoon = 15- milliliters.

In recipes it's simply "cucchiaio", you may want to add "colmo" (heaped) or "raso" (level?).

Thank you all - I liked the additon of 'colmo' as I meant a generous spoonful (of sugar) in this case. I learnt a useful phrase in relation to this in my Italian class today: quanto basta (to your taste/as you think) or it can be said as simply qb - we were discussing seasoning.