Veggie Power
Jul. 30th, 2005 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
library_mamaThis summer we’re getting a large bag of produce from a local farm every week – an assortment of whatever they have in season. I’m sure we’re eating better than usual, and we’re getting better at using up our share every week, except for the herbs. It’s a cooking adventure – how can one use up a two-gallon bag of basil without overdosing on pesto? I checked out two cookbooks just on vegetables. One of them I regret to say that I’ve forgotten the title already, but you don’t need to read it anyway. It was by some celebrity chef and had big, pretty photos of difficult-to-make recipes using obscure ingredients. No, we can’t really afford truffle oil on a regular basis. It was nice food porn, but food porn is pretty easy to find, so I’m not going to feel guilty about forgetting the title already. Here’s the one I didn’t forget:
Fresh From the Garden: Cooking and Gardening throughout the Year with 250 Recipes by Perla Meyers I quite enjoyed this book. It’s broken up first by season, then by vegetable. Each veggie starts with a little introduction on what it’s good for, gardening and storage tips. Then, a few recipes featuring the vegetable, and probably using some other things in season at the same time. The recipes are pretty straightforward, and seem geared towards the traditional cook. That is, they didn’t seem to take huge amounts of time, but they also assume that you have more than fifteen minutes to put dinner together. Also (and my biggest problem with the book), most of the dishes are either side dishes or include large amounts of meat, or both. Many of the dishes said how marvelous they would taste with veal. I’m a big fan of one-dish meals without meat. I probably won’t buy the cookbook, but the structure was brilliant, and the recipes worked well with some tweaking.
And finally, just a note on
New Best Recipe by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated I really only glanced at this myself, butamnachaidh spent six weeks reading through it. As it says, it's recipes from the magazine, where they try to make the ideal whatever it is – tomato soup or blueberry pie or whatever – and talk you through all the variations they tried and what they did before giving you the final recipe. It's also not particularly vegetarian friendly, but if you cook like amnachaidh or spacemice, you will want this book to promote deep cookery thoughts.
Fresh From the Garden: Cooking and Gardening throughout the Year with 250 Recipes by Perla Meyers I quite enjoyed this book. It’s broken up first by season, then by vegetable. Each veggie starts with a little introduction on what it’s good for, gardening and storage tips. Then, a few recipes featuring the vegetable, and probably using some other things in season at the same time. The recipes are pretty straightforward, and seem geared towards the traditional cook. That is, they didn’t seem to take huge amounts of time, but they also assume that you have more than fifteen minutes to put dinner together. Also (and my biggest problem with the book), most of the dishes are either side dishes or include large amounts of meat, or both. Many of the dishes said how marvelous they would taste with veal. I’m a big fan of one-dish meals without meat. I probably won’t buy the cookbook, but the structure was brilliant, and the recipes worked well with some tweaking.
And finally, just a note on
New Best Recipe by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated I really only glanced at this myself, but
amnachaidh spent six weeks reading through it. As it says, it's recipes from the magazine, where they try to make the ideal whatever it is – tomato soup or blueberry pie or whatever – and talk you through all the variations they tried and what they did before giving you the final recipe. It's also not particularly vegetarian friendly, but if you cook like amnachaidh or spacemice, you will want this book to promote deep cookery thoughts.
