Chez Panisse Vegetables

Rating:
Summary: A Bonus for the Home Gardener
Review: The title -"Vegetables"- says it all. This book is a wonderful choice to learn how to store, select and prepare individual vegetables in a variety of recipes which enhance that vegetable. Beautifully illustrated, it is organized alphabetically by vegetable. If you looking for more complete meals or information about vegetarian eating you will be disappointed -- the recipes are best used as side dishes for seasonal produce. For the money, I recommend Deborah Madison's "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone", I use it all the time, and I'm not a strict vegetarian.

Rating:
Summary: A keeper for your cookbook shelf if you are NOT vegetarian
Review: This book is a comprehensive resource that tells you how to select, store, and prep your vegetables. So just to demystify your farmers market, this book is an essential. However, in terms of recipes, it does fall short, treating vegetables only as soups or sides for the most part. Also if you *are* vegetarian, many recipes call for anchovies, bacon, chicken stock etc. If I had to pick between this and Deborah Madison's "Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets" I would pick the latter since that offers more main dish recipes, and covers all farm market produce, fruits, vegetables, and non-vegetarian stuff too, while keeping recipes involving vegetables vegetarian. And Deborah Madison also instructs you on how to prepare more exotic veg.
Despite the cons it is a fascinating read, and its nice that it does not assume you are already a "cook"

Rating:
Summary: A keeper for your cookbook shelf if you are NOT vegetarian
Review: This book is a comprehensive resource that tells you how to select, store, and prep your vegetables. So just to demystify your farmers market, this book is an essential. However, in terms of recipes, it does fall short, treating vegetables only as soups or sides for the most part. Also if you *are* vegetarian, many recipes call for anchovies, bacon, chicken stock etc. If I had to pick between this and Deborah Madison's "Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets" I would pick the latter since that offers more main dish recipes, and covers all farm market produce, fruits, vegetables, and non-vegetarian stuff too, while keeping recipes involving vegetables vegetarian. And Deborah Madison also instructs you on how to prepare more exotic veg.
Despite the cons it is a fascinating read, and its nice that it does not assume you are already a "cook"

Rating:
Summary: This is the best cookbook yet for vegetables.
Review: This cookbook is refreshing and ingenious. The recipes are clear and easy to follow. The text reads as a book itself, even without recipes. I live in Europe and have had a French catering business in New York before that, and not since The Frog and Commissary Cookbook from Philadelphia in the 1970's have I found a cookbook so precious to my kitchen. Alice Waters is in the same league as Julia Child.

Rating:
Summary: A necessity for the home gardner!
Review: This is a masterpiece of information and recipes that are mouthwatering. I am a food writer and recipe developer and this book is one of my most used resources. Hope to see a new version of Waters' "Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook" (my 1982 copy is nearly worn out) in the very near future.

Rating:
Summary: Fresh, crisp, and filled with stuff that's good for you.
Review: Vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike will appreciate Waters' practical approach to learning about, selecting, and cooking with vegetables of all kinds. Chapters are arranged alphabetically by vegetable and include exquisitely colored line-cut illustrations. Recipes in each chapter move from the simple to the more complex, making the book an excellent choice for beginning and advanced cooks alike. And, of course, the dishes are delicious. A "desert island" cookbook for sure.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Source for Vegetable Dishes, But Not the Best.
Review: `Chez Panisse Vegetables' by Alice Waters is a book you will want to seriously consider for your library in general, and especially if you are very fond of cooking vegetable dishes. This is not to say this is the best book on the veggie bookshelf, as there are several, both vegetarian and non that are as good or better. The most similar volume is `Vegetables Every Day' by Jack Bishop which, like Waters' volume is organized by vegetable. And, in most easily measurable regards, Bishop's book is superior if you simply cannot have more than one veggie book on your shelves.

For starters, Bishop's book weights in at 388 pages for a list price of $30 while Ms. Waters has 336 pages for a list price of $35. Bishop covers 68 named vegetables in his table of contents while Waters covers only 44; however, some of her 44 chapters cover two similar veggies, as in the chapter on broccoli and broccoli raab. Yet, while Waters gives us five recipes on these two products, Bishop gives us eleven (11) recipes on broccoli and four recipes for broccoli raab.

Bishop also gives a lot more routine information on each vegetable. 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.

But then, this review is about Waters' book, so let's get back to it. From the point of view of a book lover, there are a few things that recommend this book. First, like all of the Chez Panisse cookbooks, this one is very attractively illustrated in a vaguely French Art Nouveau style with what appear to be color pencil drawings for each vegetable. The table of contents also has the complete title of every recipe in the front of the book, which is a great help if you happen to be doing a quick search for a particular carrot or sweet potato recipe. Ms. Waters' volume also includes recipes for some vegetables not covered in Mr. Bishop's book such as Amaranth Greens, but Mr. Bishop returns the favor by covering several not highlighted by Ms. Waters.

Even though Ms. Waters dedicates more pages to mushrooms than does Mr. Bishop, Bishop offers fourteen (14) mushroom recipes to Ms. Waters twelve (12). And, Mr. Bishop tends to give more basic and more traditional recipes. Among his mushroom recipes, for example, he has a recipe for duxelles and for duxelles with scrambled eggs. Bishop also includes more recipes that include meat; but neither book should be considered a vegan or vegetarian book, as both make heavy use of dairy products in their recipes.

The two most positive things I can say about Ms. Waters book are that there is very little overlap of recipes between her book and Mr. Bishop's book and her comments are much more fun to read between commercials while watching Rachael Ray or Alton Brown on the Food Network. The introductory text is less formal, but more interesting.

While I have had Ms. Waters' book longer than I have had Mr. Bishop's volume, I still go to Chez Panisse first over all my other vegetable books, as Waters' recipes are simple, elegant, and very well explained. I go to Bishop second if I can't find anything that appeals to me from Miss Alice.

If you can, get both of these books over any other vegetable cookbook I have seen (although I have certainly not seen all). But do not get them if you need strictly vegetarian recipes. For those, see Deborah Madison's books, `The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen' by Peter Berley, or Crescent Dragonwagon's encyclopedic `Passionate Vegetarian'.

Highly recommended for foodies and cookbook collectors.