Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Is this a "new classic" and what's in this book for the average cook who wants to cook vegetarian food? This heavy tome is packed with useful recipes and is all over the map, both ethnically and in types of recipes. As other Moosewood cookbooks, this is a vegetarian cookbook, but with asides into fish, which I don't mind--being one who limits meat but has not problem eating it. Some people do view fish as living creatures, which, of course, they certainly are.
What's also new here compared to the dairy-laden earlier books is a venture into a few vegan recipes that leave out all milk, egg and other animal-source product, including a recipe for very useful mock sour cream. So there's a little something for everyone, vegetarian, limited vegetarian and even vegan. The recipes tend to the family-style rather than super-gourmet.
One of the most useful recipes for me is a vegetable broth. This is a very good recipe base all kinds of soups. I despise the taste of canned broths and it's a nuisance to make chicken stock from scratch. Vegetable stock freezes well and this recipe makes a particularly flavorful version, using carrots, onions, celery, potatoes and garlic. The potatoes, in particular add consistency to the broth. The recipe offers either sweet potato or carrot for that sweet-spicy element and the sweet potato version also adds body to the broth. There is a version for mock-chicken broth, and an Asian ginger flavored broth base as well.
Italian dishes dominate the recipes, lots of pasta sauces, including a vegetarian kind of Bolognese (meat gravy), a good basic tomato sauce, frittatas, risottos and cioppino fish stew. There are also plenty of diversions into novelties such as an interesting peach salsa.
The breads lean more to biscuits and cornbread than to yeast breads and the dessert section is loaded with cookies. There are also sections on sandwiches, wraps and mock burgers.
In summary, this is a very good vegetarian-based home cooking book, maybe something like Joy of Cooking - Veggie-Style. In that respect, this is a new classic, and certainly found a welcome home on my cooking bookshelf.
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