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Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone (精装)
by Deborah Madison
| Category:
Cookbook, Original books |
| Market price: ¥ 388.00
MSL price:
¥ 378.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Here it is - the complete vegetarian bible. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 10 items |
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-07 00:00>
I just counted 34 cookbooks in my kitchen, but this is the one I use the most. Only the Joy of Cooking gets an equal workout. This book is the only vegetarian cookbook I've ever seen that:
1) Is comprehensive enough to cover every ingredient you have in your fridge (if you have a head of fennel and a potato, and nothing else, you will probably be able to find a recipe);
2) Is neither too far in the "twigs pebbles and roughage" camp nor the "80 ingredients you never heard of and 3 hours you don't have" camp. Most recipes are reasonable in scope and actually flavorful, although if you want to create a fancy banquet you can.
Even if you are not a committed vegetarian (I'm not), but you just want to eat healthier, or to avoid the "vegetables turning into science experiments in the fridge" thing, this is a tremendous great resource.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-07 00:00>
I bought this book when I was tired of making limp salads, dull and boring pasta and overworking my herbs. Used Amazon.coms reviews to help make my purchase. Debbie Madison gives you so much more than just recipes, she provides the knowledge about everything that goes into our food that is key to understanding the way a dish works and why it was put together that way. I have used her recipes both word-for-word and as a guideline and my dishes have improved radically. Whats more, her innovative stocks, soups, pastas and vegetables team wonderfully with good well made basics from Fannie Farmers cookbook - no wonder since it looks like Marion Cunningham and Debbie Madison have a well-established collaboration! I do not own the Joy of cooking, but I feel like I have the best allies in my kitchen when I make American/ Californian food! Coming from the world of Indian cooking which absolutely calls for fresh ingredients for the best food, I really appreciate the effort that has gone into explaining the worth of vegetables, herbs and other ingredients in making food for the mind, body and soul. We need crusaders like these in these days of burgers and pizza.
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Katie (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-07 00:00>
You don't have to be vegetarian to get your money's worth from this cookbook. I refer to this cookbook often to find excellent side dishes that compliment my main courses. I enjoy all the helpful information ranging from how to pick out a good eggplant to roasting peppers. And what I truly appreciate is that every recipe I use, from the Tomato and Broccoli Salad to the Pear Pudding, turns out tasting wonderful and recieves many compliments from my guests. If you are looking for a cookbook that you can trust with failproof recipes, this book is definitely for you!
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B. Marold (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-07 00:00>
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison is festooned with placards representing virtually every American cookbook award possible for any one book. I am more than happy to follow suit by giving this book five stars with a bullet Virtually the only complaint I have about the book is that based on the title, the book has sat on my shelves for about a year, being opened only to search out a recipe for a particular vegetable, in much the same way I would open one of my several books on vegetable cooking.
This book should be called "All Cooking for People Who Don't Eat Meat", as it is indeed a cross between the Joy of Cooking plus a cooking textbook from Anne Willen or Madeline Kamman, with all the references to cooking meat, fowl, game, fin fish, or shellfish removed. It's odd that the book's cover touts Madison as the author of The Greens Cookbook, as this book is much more a successor to her later book, The Savory Way as a general audience cookbook rather than a restaurant menu book.
Another of the many reasons I regret the time I have lost in discovering the virtues of this work is that I have spend great praise on similar vegetarian cooking manuals such as Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian, Peter Berley's The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen, and Jack Bishop's The Complete Italian Vegetarian without advising the readers of those books that there is another title which is as good or better than these other volumes. All have their virtues, but Madison's book is the best. This is due to no little extent to her concentrating on vegetarian dishes known to and loved by Americans. While the Italians and the Indians have great vegetarian cuisines, the familiar dish will serve much better than the non-familiar. And, Ms. Madison, according to my new and improved title for her book, includes a very nice chapter of advice on entertaining with meatless dishes. Another subject which none of the other books touch is the issue of matching wines with meatless dishes. Ms. Madison even takes on the challenge of recommending a wine to accompany artichokes. My meager wine knowledge goes no further than to say she agrees with Mario Batali's recommendation. That's good enough for me!
Ms. Madison is a model of modesty when she claims not to have given us a book on all possible subjects, as specialized books on artisinal breads and regional cooking and pasta making and pastry making can cover those subjects much better than she can in a general cookbook. That doesn't mean she has not done a bang-up job on the coverage of the topics she has chosen to present. This is how I think she fares on six of my favorite general cooking topics:
On omelets, the treatment is concise, possibly shorter than the very detailed description by Elizabeth David, but excellent nonetheless. She touches every single recommendation I have heard about making the classic French omelet. My only reservation may be that since omelet making is all about technique, a few pictures would have really filled things out, especially as Ms. Madison's artist makes a great contribution when his drawings do appear. There are only three variations, but then, there are hundreds of variations available in the library of books on French cooking. Ms. Madison gets an A+ on her presentation of the general method.
On stocks, Ms. Madison only has to deal with vegetable stocks, but I believe she has done the very best job of treating vegetable stocks I have seen anywhere, including the treatment given in a book on vegetarian soups. She is especially careful to warn us to only put something in a stock if we are willing to eat it. Stocks are no place for garbage. She also keeps the simmer time down to below the recommended time by stock experts like the CIA. But, she goes far beyond this contribution in that she gives an analysis of what goes well together in vegetable stocks, and what should be left out.
On yeast breads, only a few basic recipes are covered, yet these are presented in such an effective way and with such positive words of encouragement that one may feel guilty in not making your own sandwich bread.
On sandwiches, one can wonder exactly what you can do if you leave out meat. Ms. Madison has many, many pages of suggestions on meatless sandwiches, topping it all off with a great series of toasted cheese sandwiches and meatless quesadillas.
On pasta making, her presentation may not replace the books by Marcella Hazan, but you could do much worse than to learn your pasta making from Ms. Madison. The best news for the amateur is that unlike Ms. Hazan, Ms. Madison gives you instruction for hand, stand mixer, and food processor techniques. Both machine methods are probably a real boon for people who love the idea of making fresh pasta but do not have the hand strength to manage the kneading of stiff dough.
On sauces, Ms. Madison's recipes and technique are right on target. I have heard widely respected TV teaching chefs give plainly false information on sauce making. I have also experienced some really weak bechamel recipes in a cookbook under the Betty Crocker logo. Ms. Madison gets it all right. Of course, being a general cookbook, she does not cover as broad a range as, for example, James Peterson in his classic work on sauces, but then, why rewrite Peterson's book. I am simply happy that Ms. Madison included such useful classics as buerre blanc, mayonnaise, and pesto.
I am also happy that Ms. Madison avoided so many cliched dishes such as pasta Puttanesca. If I were not such a cookbook collecting obsessive (and a committed omnivore), I would simply stick with this book until I simply cooked it from cover to cover.
A truly great cooking text for liberal vegetarians!
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Fredd Luongo (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-07 00:00>
This cookbook isn't just about recipes (although there are thousands of recipes in its pages), it is about the whole concept of vegetarian cooking. It's also about as comprehensive a cookbook you can buy. Everything from salads to breadmaking to frittatas to soups is covered. Each section contains a subject overview as important as any of the recipes themselves. For example, you can learn a great deal about rice, its varieties, and its culinary uses before trying one of the many fantastic risotto dishes or pilafs. Not only that, each recipe has unique personal commentary and suggestions from the author herself that will really help you put your own personal flair into many of the dishes if you wish. This book opened up a whole new world of cooking for me and for all those to whom I have recommended it.
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Rebbielou (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-07 00:00>
I don't buy cookbooks. Normally I just check them out at the library, and copy the few recipes that I think I might like to use. I renewed my copy of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone so many times the library cut me off and made me return it for someone else to use! I ordered my own copy that very same day. The recipes are flavorful, fun, and give me an easy way to incorporate new vegetables and whole grains into our diet. The fresh ingredients are exactly what I like to use, not packaged or canned items that are full of preservatives and lacking in flavor. The basic homemade pasta recipe is so good that I have it memorized, and we have fresh pasta several times per month. My family actually fights over who gets the last of the pesto, and the blueberry crisp is To Die, even though I don't normally love blueberries. The recipes are also easy to adapt and change to whatever you may have on hand. This is a wonderful book if you are concerned with knowing exactly what goes into your body. I wish that the nutritional contents were provided, as we try to limit our calories, fat and sodium like so many others do, but all in all I would highly recommend this book above any other vegetarian cookbooks I have read.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-07 00:00>
To me, the beauty of this book is not in the recipes, which are good, but the theory and ideas that it instills in the reader. The book shows how to cook, season, and accessorize vegetarian food in such a way that the reader learns, whether deliberately or not, the theory and logic behind the author's style of cooking. The organization and the cross referencing of material makes it very obvious how the author categorizes and thinks about food. After playing with the book for a bit, I've found that I've developed a new creativity with the sauces, condiments, and vegetables she presents.
There are a lot of very basic recipes in this book. Some might be tempted to ask, "who needs two paragraphs on how to boil green beans?" But having the basics presented makes the book a very useful reference. If you're the sort of person who buys brussel sprouts once a year, it's worthwhile having a reference on how to purchase, prepare, and boil them. Having the basic recipe also provides a basis for the variations she usually attaches, variations that range in complexity to adding lemon and parsley to making triple-decker souflees.
I should note that, while offering a few more exotic recipes, the author wisely sticks to her own American style of cooking. This is not a book that will teach you how to make sag paneer or vegetarian pad thai! Instead, it presents, more or less, the author's own clear and uncluttered style. (Other reviewers have called this style "Californian", though not being anywhere near California, I can't say I know).
Think of it as a book of jazz licks and riffs. You can borrow from the examples presented, but eventually you'll find that your hands are fixing up spicy mango and plum chutneys to accompany your spinach frittata, without even thinking about it.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-07 00:00>
I own only three cookbooks, as I prefer to try new recipes from magazines. Yet this book is a resource I turn to repeatedly. I've learned so much in the way of basics from Deborah Madison, as well as many interesting new skills and techniques. There's nothing fussy or pretentious in this book. I've found her recipes to be rich and flavorful. It's great to come home from the farmer's market and turn to this reference to discover, "What can I make with these chiles or this eggplant that I just bought?" Her recipes have many variations and adaptations, so that you can return to familiar favorites and experiment with them in a new way, using whatever ingredients you might happen to have on hand.
This book has made it even easier for me to be a vegetarian. I've followed Deborah Madison for 10 years, ever since I first discovered her Greens restaurant in San Francisco. It's been a joy to watch her grow as a cook and as an author, and to grow with her in my own greater commitment to vegetarianism and skill and experience as a cook. This truly is a book of "vegetarian cooking for everyone." It genuinely brings vegetarian cooking into the mainstream and makes it accessible for everyone. You don't need to have access to exotic or hard-to-find ingredients to prepare the foods in this book. It's a rich resource well worth the investment, for it will take me a long time to experiment with every recipe and variation in this book. It's inspired my curiosity to try more vegetables and has led me to appreciate the abundance and bounty that exists in simple vegetables--so much so, that I feel no sacrifice in not eating meat. Deborah Madison has helped cement a final step in my gradual path toward vegetarianism and has made it surprisingly simple to eat this way. It's been a great pleasure to discover how many varied and rich ways one can eat the simple products of the earth. A greasy hamburger pales in comparison to the treasures offered in this book.
You don't have to be a vegetarian, however, to appreciate this book, and the author isn't preachy about vegetarianism at all. Rather than a collection of recipes, this is a book about discovery, experimentation, and growth in skill as a cook.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-07 00:00>
I'm carnivorous, but I enjoy this book because it raises the role of the vegetable to a higher ground. Frankly, I love fruits, vegetables and legumes, yet too many cookbooks push these aside as just some side-dish. This book gives me inspiration to juxtapose traditional meat and vegetable roles. VCFE is a major work - the book is unwaveringly devoted to its subject and the variety and depth of coverage is very impressive. I can somewhat understand the complaint that a handful recipes are simply <vegetable>, olive oil and lemon, but I think the intent was to highlight a particular subject and not drown it out with other flavors. I disagree with the complaint about the lack of nutritional information. Few cookbooks bother and often it isn't difficult to figure it out yourself. It's engraved in my brain that a tablespoon of a fat, be it butter, lard or oil is about 14g of fat and 130 calories. Buy a nutritional guide and truly learn the nutritional value of foods. You rarely can go wrong with eating in moderation the widest variety of whole foods possible (and if you abstain from meat, this is even more important). I am not fond of a diet laden with hard-to-digest cheeses and creams, so I appreciate Deborah's coverage of unprocessed whole foods. She carries no pretention: whether you are the strictest vegan or the most ravenous carnivore, here is a modern presentation of the most plentiful food group on Earth.
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Teantae Turner (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-07 00:00>
This massive, information packed tome covers just about everything someone would want to know about non-meat cooking. Not just a book of recipes, she shares techniques and other useful information written simply so that any level cook can understand.
There are lots of basic recipes for the hesitant as well as more complex (yet still doable) recipes for those wanting to explore. I found most recipes to be short and simply to prepare, allowing the flavor of the main ingredient or the style of preparation to shine through. The "Braised Carrots" are simply and very delicious!
The layout is not exactly easy to follow at first glance. You can scan the table of contents or simply flip through the book to locate an interesting recipe, but if you are looking for a specific ingredient or preparation technique to use, turn to the index instead.
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1 Total 1 pages 10 items |
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