Rating: 
Summary: My favorite cookbook
Review: If I could only own one cookbook, this would definitely be the one! Fabulous, creative, tasty recipes, complex but not difficult to prepare, and most of the ingredients are readily available. I have a huge collection of vegetarian cookbooks that I rarely open since I got this one a few months ago. Highly reccommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Creative and Different
Review: My family is vegetarian and I am always looking for new ways to dress up vegetables.I have looked through so many"vegetarian cookbooks"only to find the same recipes over and over again.But this is a star-offers fancy and ethnic menu ideas-its like your own kitchen can churn out delightful dishes like a restaurant for a fraction of that cost.
Rating:
Summary: Our *favorite* cookbook!
Review: My wife and I have a lot of vegetarian cookbooks sitting on our shelves. This is the one we've given for a holiday gift to vegetarians and carnivores alike! The recipes are easy to follow, and range from quick and simple to time consuming and rewarding. Most of the recipes in this book are fantastic. Well worth getting for anyone who likes to cook and has good taste in food.
Rating:
Summary: Truly Elegant Vegetarian Food
Review: The book design is horrible (just try to read the page numbers through the "decorative" stripes!), Emmons's introductions to the recipes are often cutesy, and some of the recipes take a LOT of work. So why award this book five stars? Because these recipes simply can't be beat. The falafel burgers alone are worth buying the book for -- spiked with carrot, lemon, cumin, and tahini, they taste infinitely better than any beef hamburger I've ever tried. Then there's delicate rattatouille with feather-light basil dumplings, the espresso peanut cookies, the Chinese noodle pancakes with asparagus, the bistro salad with chunks of avocado nestled among tender leaves of butter lettuce, the unusual and beguiling pasta with roasted garlic and butternut squash ... page after page of fabulous, fresh, imaginative food. This is a book you can cook out of for a dinner party without road-testing the menu, because you know Emmons's food will be delicious. And it won't duplicate other books in your collection with yet another risotto or miso soup; the recipes are original without being silly or trendy. Many of the dishes are somewhat challenging, but the payoff is always worth it. Although there are recipes here that work well for weeknights, I think of this largely as a book for times when I want the pleasure of making something special, good enough for company or for indulging myself and my family. I've cooked perhaps 30 things or more from this, and had only one failure, with the over-rich brownies. The sidebars are often helpful and fun to read, as well. Simply a stellar book.
Rating:
Summary: Truly Elegant Vegetarian Food
Review: The book design is horrible (just try to read the page numbers through the "decorative" stripes!), Emmons's introductions to the recipes are often cutesy, and some of the recipes take a LOT of work. So why award this book five stars? Because these recipes simply can't be beat. The falafel burgers alone are worth buying the book for -- spiked with carrot, lemon, cumin, and tahini, they taste infinitely better than any beef hamburger I've ever tried. Then there's delicate rattatouille with feather-light basil dumplings, the espresso peanut cookies, the Chinese noodle pancakes with asparagus, the bistro salad with chunks of avocado nestled among tender leaves of butter lettuce, the unusual and beguiling pasta with roasted garlic and butternut squash ... page after page of fabulous, fresh, imaginative food. This is a book you can cook out of for a dinner party without road-testing the menu, because you know Emmons's food will be delicious. And it won't duplicate other books in your collection with yet another risotto or miso soup; the recipes are original without being silly or trendy. Many of the dishes are somewhat challenging, but the payoff is always worth it. Although there are recipes here that work well for weeknights, I think of this largely as a book for times when I want the pleasure of making something special, good enough for company or for indulging myself and my family. I've cooked perhaps 30 things or more from this, and had only one failure, with the over-rich brownies. The sidebars are often helpful and fun to read, as well. Simply a stellar book.
Rating:
Summary: Best cookbook on earth
Review: This is an astonishingly good vegetarian cookbook, from which almost all of my very recipes come. Especially fine are her pizzas, Indian dishes, and rice dishes (there's one with saffron that more than justifies the expense of that spice). In terms of preparation time the recipes are about average, and the required ingredients are generally available at the local supermarket. And if you visit Cambridge, MA, be sure to have lunch at Emmons' Veggie Planet, around the corner from Harvard.
Rating:
Summary: Anchor your cook books with this title!
Review: This is the cookbook that is the soul in my cook book collection. The layout is thoughtfully presented with nice indexing. Emmons rarely uses ingredients that are expensive and/or difficult to find at a basic grocery store. She caters to a pan-vegetarian palete by including receipes from many different cultures--including North American. I guess what I like most about this book is that you do not need to be experienced to have fun and make great food, nor do you need to suffer through endless basic this-is-a-vegetable chatter. The only criticism I sometimes had is that spices sometimes need to be adjusted, but that is according to taste anyhow.
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite Cookbooks!
Review: This is the first vegetarian cookbook that I have tried, and I must say that it has become one of my favorites. I am not a vegetarian, but do always try to cook and eat healthy foods, which is one of the reasons why I purchased this book. I have a wide variety of cookbooks in my collection, but I find myself pulling this one off of the shelf all of the time. Everything that I have tried has turned out wonderfully! Ms. Emmons writes little stories about the recipes that make it fun to read. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for some fun,easy, and healthy recipes.
Rating:
Summary: Great ovo-lacto cookbook for elegant dining
Review: This is truly a wonderful cookbook to have for elegant vegetarian cooking. It is for ovo-lacto vegetarians and the emphasis is on fancy dishes and exotic ingredients. A wonderful book to find recipes for entertaining or special events, but I found it a little difficult for the routine three meals a day. Throughout the book are sidebars on ingredients and techniques that make this book entertaining and educational. The author's introductions to the recipes also help bring each one down to a personal experience. A great cookbook for ovo-lacto fancy dining.
Rating:
Summary: Out-of-this-world recipes for everyone--not just vegetarians
Review: Vegetarian cookbooks sometimes concern me, as their thrust seems actually to be towards NON-vegetarians. Such great volumes of text are spent trying to convince the reader of the sundry benefits of the vegetarian diet that the energy left over for recipes and recipe description is minimal ("This cheesy soy casserole is just so yummy!"). No, thanks. "Vegetarian Planet," though, seems content to convince on the strength of its recipes. I fell for this book partly because of the fact that it has an entire chapter on dumplings--from gnocchi to pierogis, from quenelles to pot-stickers--but the desserts also interested me, and so did the salads (in addition to these and others, there are also chapters on tortillas, pizza, and burgers and sandwiches). This is a lovely book, put together by a palate familiar with a wide range of cuisines and flavors, and smart enough to know how to combine them in some swinging recipes. The recipes are terrific--the pasta recipes are especially to be recommended (try the one which uses as the sauce a puree of sweet red peppers and almonds--absolutely divine!).
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