Co-write a cookbook with your offspring, and it will be a beautiful collaboration or the start of a world war.

For Tony Danza and son Marc, it was the former, even if the charismatic performer snickers just a bit when he talks about Marc's mango salsa.

"Don't Fill Up on the Antipasto: Tony Danza's Father-Son Cookbook" (Scribner, $22) is a paean to the Italian-American family, filled with memories of Danza's summers on New York's Long Island and 50 family recipes, among them Sunday sauce with meatballs and "Pasta Nicky," named for Tony's 3-year-old grandson, Nicholas.

"Don't Fill Up on the Antipasto" is part cookbook, part family memoir.

"When my son and I first talked about doing this, I said, 'Marc, I'm not sure I want anybody to know about all these things. You know, my mother's recipes. It's a window into who you are,'" Tony said. "But now, it's touching everybody. Today, a woman said to me that her husband, who's Jewish, says that my meatballs are just as good as her kreplach."

Q. In your family, is a meatball the true test of a cook?

A. If you can make a meatball, you can make anything else. It's a feel thing. There's a chapter titled "Don't Be Afraid," which is when my father's standing over my shoulder yelling at me, "Put the pepper in! Don't be afraid!" You can't be afraid with meatballs.

Q. Let's settle an old debates. The sauce: Sugar or no?

A. No. The reason people put sugar in sauce is because the core of the tomato is bitter. My family either takes the core out and throws it away, or crushes the tomato, runs it all through a colander and throws out the pulp.

Q. Pasta water: Add salt before it boils?

A. You got to salt it after, because it takes so much longer to boil once you've salted it.

Q. You spent summers on Long Island with your Uncle Vinny and Aunt Rose. Tell us about "The Great Lobster of Patchogue."

A. My Uncle Vinny was the kind of guy that if he taught you how to play poker, at the end of the lesson, you owed him $50,000 and your mother's house -- and he wanted it. One Sunday, my Uncle Vinny and my Uncle Mike get in the car, and they come back with one giant lobster. It had to be 40 years old. And they were chasing us around with it . . . It probably tasted horrible, but it ended up in the sauce, so you don't know.

Q. You were only 19 when Marc was born. How has that shaped your relationship?

A. One of the great things about having a kid when you're 19 is that he grows up with your relatives. He knew my grandmother, he knew all these uncles and aunts. . . . When I first got into show business, they had all these talk shows -- Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin -- and I used to take him on with me, because he was better than a puppy dog. And there I was on "The View" with him today, and I was thinking, "Thirty years later and we're doing the same thing." It's kind of, I don't know . . . heady.

Q. Are you competitive in the kitchen?

A. [Marc's] more creative. He makes a great mango salsa. It's not something I would do. And he makes these crazy pestos. He's a less traditional cook than I am.

Q. What would he say about your cooking?

A. He'd say he tries not to make my recipes, because they never come out the way I make them.