Vegetables Every Day: The Definitive Guide to Buying and Cooking Today's Produce With over 350 Recipes

Rating:
Summary: A cookbook that never gets filed away
Review: This unique cookbook, organized by vegetable, is invaluable. I keep it on my counter so when I open the refrigerator to prepare a meal and find only radishes, mushrooms, and/or celery in the vegetable bin, I can turn to that vegetable and find a delicious way to prepare it. I consult it when I want to know how to store a vegetable. I consult it when I've found a new-to-me vegetable in a recipe and have no clue how to select one in the grocery store. I've found many recipes that have become favorites. I couldn't believe how delicious asparagus is roasted. And it's the same with mushrooms; roasting concentrates their flavor amazingly; you'll never think of plain button mushrooms as boring again. I've served them to guests for appetizers; they always love them. And who would think to braise radishes?? It's a GREAT way to use those radishes that have been in the fridge for too long. There are lots of gems in this cookbook. It's one of my TOP FIVE COOKBOOKS that sit out on the counter and get used again and again. No glossy photos, just plain good advice on every page.

Rating:
Summary: Use this cookbook every day!
Review: You know you should eat your vegetables every day, but you've run out of ideas for how to cook them? Jack Bishop to the rescue with "Vegetables Every Day." This cookbook includes over 60 chapters, each devoted to a different vegetable - ranging from the "ordinary" carrots, broccoli, and squash to the "exotic" calabaza, malanga, and taro. Within each chapter there is a brief introduction including helpful information on availability, selection, storage, basic preparation, and best general cooking methods. The introduction is followed by several diverse recipes, representing a variety of flavors and cooking techniques. The vast majority of the recipes are for side dishes (and most of the others are soups or appetizers), making this book ideal for meat-and-potatos cooks looking for more variety in their veggie choices. There are very few vegetarian main courses. Most of the recipes are simple to make and use readily-available ingredients, making this a cookbook you can really use every day.

Rating:
Summary: Use this cookbook every day!
Review: You know you should eat your vegetables every day, but you've run out of ideas for how to cook them? Jack Bishop to the rescue with "Vegetables Every Day." This cookbook includes over 60 chapters, each devoted to a different vegetable - ranging from the "ordinary" carrots, broccoli, and squash to the "exotic" calabaza, malanga, and taro. Within each chapter there is a brief introduction including helpful information on availability, selection, storage, basic preparation, and best general cooking methods. The introduction is followed by several diverse recipes, representing a variety of flavors and cooking techniques. The vast majority of the recipes are for side dishes (and most of the others are soups or appetizers), making this book ideal for meat-and-potatos cooks looking for more variety in their veggie choices. There are very few vegetarian main courses. Most of the recipes are simple to make and use readily-available ingredients, making this a cookbook you can really use every day.

Rating:
Summary: Great Reference for Vegetarians and Everyday Cooks
Review: `Vegetables Every Day' is by Jack Bishop, a very intelligent craftsman of cookbooks similar to James Peterson, Molly Katzen, Rose Levy Beranbaum, and Pam Anderson. Each is skillful at creating very useful reference books on various aspects of cooking. And, it should be no surprise that both Bishop and Pam Anderson are current or past senior staffers at `Cooks Illustrated' magazine.

It is a great treat to have two of these skillful authors both do excellent books on vegetables, and to have the two books done from two so different points of view that one will feel no pangs of waste by owning both. Bishop's book is certainly the more accessible of the two, as the material is presented in a very straightforwardly encyclopedic presentation. There are uniform articles on 66 different vegetables, a veritable celebration of the variety of vegetables available through part or all of the year round. Among these 66, there are the old favorites such as broccoli, carrots, celery, mushrooms, potatoes, tomatoes, and onions. Alongside these there are new favorites brought to our attention by hours of watching Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, and Jaime Oliver such as Artichokes, Broccoli Rabe, Cardoons, Celery Root, Dandelion Greens, Fava Beans, Fennel, Soybeans, Turnips, and Zucchini. At the far end of familiarity are Boniato, Burdock, Calabaza, Chayote, Jerusalem Artichokes, Kohlrabi, Malanga, Sorrel, Taro, and Yuca. These are the veggies which should be approached with one of my favorite Alton Brown `Good Eats' moments when he recommends that you walk into your megamart with fresh eyes on the lookout for unfamiliar products and investigate what can be done with these little gems.

Bishop is not only intent on providing things to do with newly available produce, he is intent on making cooking all vegetables, especially the old standards with a new set of recipes to make them more interesting and to make cooking them more fun. One excellent case in point is asparagus that everyone either boils or steams and dresses with some creamy sauce. Since everyone already knows how to do this, Bishop doesn't bother to give recipes for these. Rather, his nine asparagus recipes include three roasting methods, a grilling recipe, two sautee recipes, a recipe with Chinese noodles, a recipe with a vinaigrette, and an asparagus frittata.

Every article, regardless of how many recipes may be given, has the same seven (7) paragraphs in the introductory article. The first paragraph simply introduces you to the vegetable and gives you a general idea of the appeal and usability of the vegetable. The next paragraph on availability gives the best season for the produce and whether or not the vegetable is currently available year round in American markets. The third paragraph on selection gives us criteria for whether we want to pick up today's selection of a species or let it alone. The paragraph on storage is especially useful, as there is probably very little wisdom handed down from your Eastern European grandma on storing tomatillos, taro, or jicama or from your Mexican mom on dealing with arugula, bok choy, or burdock. The basic preparation paragraph can be simple for leafy greens or very complicated for artichokes. The very short section on best cooking methods is primarily useful for totally unfamiliar vegetables. A very useful last entry gives recipes on other vegetables in which the titular ingredient appears.

One may not think there is anything controversial about vegetables, but you may be surprised, especially if you read Bishop's and Peterson's books side by side. On the matter of asparagus, Bishop prefers thin to medium thickness stalks and prefers not to peel them. Peterson prefers medium to thick stalks and strongly recommends peeling the stalks. To a certain extent, this is a matter of personal preference, but much of this difference comes from the fact that Peterson is a former restaurant chef / owner while there is no record in Bishop's biographical information that he ever worked in a restaurant kitchen. If time is less important than money, then Peterson's position is definitely the better. If time is at a premium, Bishop's position may be preferable. On almost all other issues, the two authors agree.

One corollary of Bishop's objective in preparing this book is that this is not a reference for the most commonly prepared recipes. But, this is not universally true. While the traditional steaming or poaching methods for asparagus is absent, classic mashed potatoes and the traditional Greek salad with tomatoes are here. Bishop is certainly on the side of the gourmet when it comes to discussing tomatoes. He is in love with fresh homegrown tomatoes in July and August, but recommends canned `maters all other times of the year.

One of the most enjoyable discoveries in Bishop's book is to find ways to treat certain vegetables in totally unexpected ways. Two cases are shallots and garlic. Both are most commonly thought of as herbs to enliven dishes where some other vegetable or protein is the main ingredient, but if you are willing to pay the price, shallots make a great main ingredient, not really much different in cost from, for example cippolini or wild mushrooms.

In choosing between Bishop and Peterson, I find that Bishop is much better for the average cook who does not spend a lot of time reading cookbooks. The organization is much better for finding a good recipe for the veg that happened to be on special today. Peterson's book is much more oriented toward the foodie and the professional. It is organized more by method than by ingredient and it is much better at presenting instructions on difficult techniques such as cleaning an artichoke. Peterson has the one thing I miss the most in Bishop's book, which are good pictures of vegetables. Neither comes with the lyrics of Frank Zappa's `Ask Any Vegetable'.

Very highly recommended as a vegetarian and general cook's reference for recipes and buying advice.