Vegetable Literacy: Cooking and Gardening with Twelve Families from the Edible Plant Kingdom, with over 300 Deliciously Simple Recipes Author: Deborah Madison | Language: English | ISBN:
B009FKTV7O | Format: PDF
Vegetable Literacy: Cooking and Gardening with Twelve Families from the Edible Plant Kingdom, with over 300 Deliciously Simple Recipes Description
In her latest cookbook, Deborah Madison, America's leading authority on vegetarian cooking and author of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, reveals the surprising relationships between vegetables, edible flowers, and herbs within the same botanical families, and how understanding these connections can help home cooks see everyday vegetables in new light.
Destined to become the new standard reference for cooking vegetables,
Vegetable Literacy, by revered chef Deborah Madison, shows cooks that vegetables within the same family, because of their shared characteristics, can be used interchangeably in cooking. For example, knowing that dill, chervil, cumin, parsley, coriander, anise, and caraway come from the umbellifer family makes it clear why they're such good matches for carrots, also an umbel. With stunning images from the team behind Canal House cookbooks and website, and 150 classic and exquisitely simple recipes, such as Savoy Cabbage on Rye Toast with GruyèreCheese; Carrots with Caraway Seed, Garlic, and Parsley; and Pan-fried Sunchokes with Walnut Sauce and Sunflower Sprouts; Madison brings this wealth of information together in dishes that highlight a world of complementary flavors.
- File Size: 40682 KB
- Print Length: 418 pages
- Publisher: Ten Speed Press; 1 edition (March 12, 2013)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B009FKTV7O
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #85,774 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #36
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Vegetables & Vegetarian > Vegetables
- #36
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Vegetables & Vegetarian > Vegetables
Some of my favorite cookbooks are not those that the newest or most interesting recipes, but those that make me think differently about a whole class or category of food (think James Peterson's Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making or Diane Morgan's Roots: The Definitive Compendium with more than 225 Recipes). Vegetable Literacy does just that. Deborah Madison translates her years of experience with vegetarian cooking into a beautiful homage to vegetables.
One of the key premises of this book is that understanding the relationships between vegetables may influence the way you think about and use them. For example, the Knotweed family includes buckwheat, sorrel, and rhubarb. Knowing the relationship between these ingredients may inform your use of them. Thus, you may choose to add rhubarb to buckwheat muffins, knowing that the two share a phylogenetic family and thus have a natural affinity.
Vegetable Literacy is organized by vegetable family. Each member of the family is described in detail, with great information about appearance, history, and nutrients. The entry also includes excellent varieties to look for, information about using other portions of the plant, "kitchen wisdom," and other foods with which the vegetable pairs well.
In addition to all of this fantastic information about vegetables (both common and uncommon -- how much did I know about salsify before this book? Absolutely nothing), Vegetable Literacy contains some fantastic recipes.
I have long been a fan of Deborah Madison. I once had the opportunity to learn from her before the publication of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, my favorite cookbook until today. Her recipes are nothing short of brilliant, and she is a genuinely nice person to boot. Her recipes turn the humble vegetable into sparkling masterpieces. Her ingredients are well thought out, and each one serves to add an important flavor component to the dish. I have been making some of her recipes for 12 or so years, from Greens, etc. and they do not seem dated, they still stun with their uniqueness and freshness. Therefore I could not wait to get my hands on this book, and I am totally thrilled with it. It is, in my opinion, a master work, and is her most gorgeous book to date. The Broccoli Bites with Curried Mayonnaise for example are quick to make, taste wonderful, and left me wondering why I had not thought of doing that before! Ditto the tomato and cilantro soup with black quinoa.
Besides being an absolutely fabulous cookbook, this is a great reference book. Instead of going from A-Z (A is for Asparagus, etc.) as so many authors have done with vegetables, Madison does something pretty astounding, and classifies vegetables by family. Deborah, through years of cooking and gardening experience, has observed that vegetables in the same family can be used interchangeably in cooking, due to shared botanical characteristics. So it greatly helps with the mystery of why some substitutions work beautifully and why some leave your family saying eeeek! She consulted with Botanist to bring us a book that is fun to read and learn from. The book has beautiful photography as well as formatting, and as usual Madison has some truly inventive and delicious recipes.
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