Book Price Comparisons
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 Great Cookbook I came across this book at a bookstore, so I had the opportunity to browse through it (I always like to do that with books and cookbooks). The layout was good, and the recipes looked good, too. They were simple, but with plenty of variations. I like to think of myself as a pretty good cook, but I'm just starting out, and there are a lot of things I don't know the basics on. The recipes cater to both of those sides of me--deep enough for me to grow with, but covering the basics in the areas I'm clueless about. There are also a lot of explanations about things, too--the best soup recipes to use tomatoes in, when to salt veggies and when not to salt them, which kind of potatoes to use for which recipes. I'm not quite a vegetarian, but I'm thinking about it...what I know is I definitely want a more plant-based diet. I don't want plain boiled veggies all the time, or the same old salad. The author is not a vegetarian but has done extensive research...I think the book would be good for vegans, flexible vegetarians, and those who just want tasty veggie recipes. ps...I have already tried several recipes and enjoyed them thoroughly...Black Bean Soup, salad dressing (everyone loved this one). Excellent General Cookbook for Liberal Vegetarian. Buy It! `How to Cook Everything Vegetarian' by New York Times culinary columnist, Mark Bittman, is an important entry into the best vegetarian cookbook sweepstakes. Please be clear that this green covered book is far larger and far better than the yellow covered subset of his earlier best-selling `How to Cook Everything'. Since I gave that yellow subset a bad review, a kind commentator pointed out that what is a person to do if they are vegetarian, and don't need to know how to make veal parmesan, meatballs, or fried chicken! This volume clearly answers that question. The competition for this book is Deborah Madison's classic `Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone'. An encyclopedic companion to both would be Crescent Dragonwagon's `Passionate Vegetarian'. If space and finances permit, I would suggest you own all three volumes. The difference between Bittman and Madison may lie primarily in the fact that the former is a culinary journalist and the latter began her career as a professional chef. So, Bittman has a better eye for communicating to a larger audience while Madison is better on some of the basic truths of cooking. Her discussion of soups and stocks is especially brilliant. Bittman addresses the largest possible `vegetarian' audience, which includes the most liberal, who consume eggs and milk products. But he is quite effective in identifying for the vegans among you which recipes are free of all animal products, both in icons accompanying each recipe and in a master list of recipes at the back of the book. Eggs are so prominent that the index contains a full page, that's four columns of small print, of entries under egg related recipes. Under cheese recipes, there are two pages, eight columns of fine print of recipes. Bittman explains this in the section on vegetarian substitutions when he gives easy replacements for butter, milk, and cream, but says that virtually nothing can replace eggs and most cheeses in traditional recipes. I am puzzled and grateful that Bittman does not suggest using synthetic lecithin in the place of eggs in recipes. Lecithin does not even appear in the index of this book. This substitutions section also has some really great suggestions for omnivores in the realm of less saturated replacements for butter and flavored butters. This is a full service cookbook. I am especially impressed by the fact that he starts out in the same way as James Peterson in his recent textbook, `Cooking'. Both begin with a description of `The Ten Essential Cooking Techniques'. Being a teaching book, Peterson's sections on each method are longer, running to three large pages compared to Bittman's two to three paragraphs. But, if you are vegetarian, Bittman's book is still more useful, as much of Peterson's space is dedicated to cooking animal protein. Another interesting contrast to Peterson is that while the teacher uses series of photographs to illustrate techniques, Bittman uses black ink drawings. And, amazingly enough, the latter is generally the more successful technique, as nothing is out of focus and there are never any obscuring shadows, and only the essentials of the technique are depicted. A common technique in many of Bittman's recipes is to amend each recipe with several variations, as when he suggests five fillings for sweet crepes and six fillings for savory crepes. Hard on this section is '10 Other Ideas for Pancakes' and seven `Pancake Variations'. Bittman also spends much time on teaching us the range of ingredient types, and general ways to handle each type. For example, we get `A Lexicon of Salad Greens'. This material is even more important for the vegetarian, as they need to seek the greatest possible variety of tastes and colors in the vegetable world. A vegetarian salad repertoire which knew nothing beyond iceberg lettuce would be dull indeed. Bittman does better in this area than the salad queen, Alice Waters, in her excellent `The Art of Simple Cooking'. Bittman's mastery of communication is best represented by his many cross-indexing of recipe types, as he does in a sidebar of lettuce cups and wraps, giving the names and page numbers of fourteen recipes scattered throughout the book which use this technique. The centerpiece of this cross-indexing is the `Recipes by Icon' in the back of the book which tick off those which are `Fast', `Make Ahead', and `Vegan'. A similar feature is the list of forty menus for Breakfasts, Brunches, Lunches, Dinners, and Holiday Dinners. For his vegetarian audience, this is far more useful than for omnivores, who have a far greater choice of protein types. Every trend in the book is magnified in the excellent chapter on pasta, noodles, and dumplings. Every sidebar seemed to offer not ten, but up to 50 variations on all sorts of stuff. I was momentarily disappointed to find no recipe for making fresh pasta in the first 10 pages of the chapter, but there it was, of page 474 and the following 21 pages. Everything you would need to make fresh pasta, gnocchi, dumplings. It even included the German specialty, Spaetzle, bless his heart. While all the standards are well-represented, some peripheral ingredients such as rhubarb and celeriac get good representation in uncommon recipes. I was especially pleased to find four excellent recipes for my favorite Brussels Sprouts. Even chestnuts get a dozen entries in the index. Madison has nothing on chestnuts! Bittman's `How to Cook Everything' is always my first stop whenever I want to try a classic dish unfamiliar to me, and I have been invariably pleased with the clarity and results of his recipes. This book continues this trend. Every recipe I read is clear, unfussy, and easy to follow. If you are a vegetarian who permits milk and eggs, this book is a must. If you are a tad stricter, Deborah Madison's classic may be more useful for the money. You Don't Need to Be Vegetarian to Love This Book Like Bittman, I am not a vegetarian but would like to eat more fruit, veges, whole grains and non-meat protein sources like tofu & seitan. This is an impressive book! I purchased a copy for myself and one for my Dad (a terrific cook but definitely not a vegetarian either). The vege tempura turned out great, the mac & cheese and variations are terrific, and the book is worth the price if only for the various salsas & relishes. Dad thinks it's great also and wants to try the various spice mixtures and relishes. **If you already have Bittman's other books, there is a lot of new material here, so have a look!** Great basics, good ideas. I think an important part of reviewing any cookbook is actually using it, not just reading it. I have a large collection of cookbooks, but I've been using this one near daily for a couple of weeks now. I've now made many dishes, and I've been very satisfied. Not all the recipes are the MOST elegant of their kind out there, but the straightforward simplicity more than makes up for that. This book focuses on simple ingredients and preparation, and that's what you get. I actually think the simplicity of directions require at least some basic cooking skills because you CAN go wrong if you don't have basic cooking intuition. For example, I find his basic bread recipe one of the most straightforward and best recipes I've ever used, but the directions require a basic understanding of how bread dough should feel. Having basic cooking skills also makes it easier to try some of his suggestions for altering any particular recipe. It's a fun book with plenty of good ideas, of which many were new to me. | |||||||||||||
