Perfect Vegetables: Part of "The Best Recipe" Series
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Manufacturer: America's Test Kitchen
Publisher: America's Test Kitchen
Perfect Vegetables: Part of "The Best Recipe" Series Description
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.65
EAN: 9780936184692
ISBN: 0936184698
Label: America's Test Kitchen
Manufacturer: America's Test Kitchen
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2003-08
Publisher: America's Test Kitchen
Studio: America's Test Kitchen
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.65
EAN: 9780936184692
ISBN: 0936184698
Label: America's Test Kitchen
Manufacturer: America's Test Kitchen
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2003-08
Publisher: America's Test Kitchen
Studio: America's Test Kitchen
Editorial Review of Perfect Vegetables: Part of "The Best Recipe" Series
How to prepare and cook everything from asparagus to winter squash Do you know why most stuffed peppers are soggy and bland? Is it better to blanch or steam broccoli? Will washing mushrooms make them waterlogged? In Perfect Vegetables the editors address these and hundreds of commonly asked questions about vegetables. There are more than 350 recipes including Glazed Carrots with Bacon, Grilled Portobello and Spinach Salad and Tomato and Mozzarella Tart
Customer Reviews of Perfect Vegetables: Part of "The Best Recipe" Series
Customer Rating: 
Review Summary: Finally - Vegetables Get Some Respect
Review: Vegetables have always been the Rodney Dangerfield of food: they never get any respect. They are variously beaten, cooked, stewed, molded, mashed, seasoned, sauced, and pureed to death, sometimes more than once in the same recipe. This behavior even includes places that you expect would have more respect for our botanical friends: Indian/Hindu/vegetarian, Oriental/Buddhist/vegetarian, California/vegan. The cookbook aisles are littered with the carnage of bad vegetable recipes. Properly cooking vegetables is neither easy nor fast. Correctly done, the vegetable portion of your meal often takes MORE time and/or effort than, say, the protein centerpiece of your meal.
This book qualifies as a genuine vegetable encyclopedia that you can rely on for accurate information and proper cooking methods. You get 44 vegetables. Each and every one gets several pages and a thorough treatment, including recommended prep methods and recipes. Typically, each vegetable gets a half dozen or so pages (beets and okra get 2 pages, potatoes 50). This book is an alphabetical encyclopedia of the proper way to prep and cook vegetables. It was a real joy to finally see vegetables given the respect they deserve. Be mindful, however, that this means that cooking your vegetables are no longer quick, easy, and simple.
Their prep methods for artichoke and asparagus are very good, but causes you to throw away some edible parts. Do you know the best way to ripen avocados? This and much more about vegetables will be revealed to you. Can you cook a brussel sprout that people will actually eat? Do you have to cut an "x" in the base? Did you know that there are a couple of frozen vegetables that actually pass muster with the authors? The vegetables chosen are all the standard, usual ones you will find in any supermarket. The authors have the integrity to avoid special, rare, hard to find vegetables that might be fabulous, but impossible to get unless you are a celebrity super-chef in Manhattan. A properly prepared vegetable, although just a side-dish, should be good enough, with a glass of wine, to serve as a light supper all by itself. Are the vegetables you typically prepare at home this good? I was rather surprised that squash (winter and summer) got short-shrift in this book. They are so cheap, so plentiful, so easy to get, and so good, why not devote more attention to them? The only answer I can imagine is that the staff of CI are not very fond of squash, regardless of season.
This is a truly brilliant cookbook, but I knock it down a notch for the poorly thought out format. It is designed just like their periodical, Cooks Illustrated. The format might be suitable for a magazine, but it is a serious mistake for a book designed to be a ready reference for the home cook's bookshelf.
1) Problem #1 - Side Bar Mania. Kitchen tool reviews and taste tests are randomly scattered throughout the test. They are listed in the index under `equipment' and `ingredients' respectively, right where the home cook is likely to forget that they even exist in the book. These should be collated right in front along with the TOC.
2) Problem #2 - Where are the `master recipes'? This book uses a concept they call `master recipe' for the main prep/cooking method for a vegetable plus the variations. The TOC only lists the vegetable. This might be OK for a chapter that has only one master recipe, but is a major flaw for chapters that has 15 such `master recipes'. Each and every master recipe should be listed in the TOC. As is, this book is only marginally useful as a reference.
3) Problem #3 - More Side Bar Mania. Important information about the particular vegetable tends to be buried in each chapter. In potatoes, for example, important information about their storage (and that the frig is OK for them) is buried 4/5 of the way through potato chapter in the middle of a section about French potato salads, where you will never find it unless you read the entire chapter. How is this suppose to help the home cook?
4) Problem #4 - OK, now I am just picking nits. The photographs are out of focus and kind of irritating to look at. How could a food stylist permit this to happen? OK, one baby bok choy is in focus, but the other 3 are blurry; and this flaw is true of all except one (grilled corn) of the color photos.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Great book!
Review: Has helped me to improve my vegetable consumption with cooking techniques and tasty recipes.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Perfect Vegetables
Review: This book on vegetables covers every thing you need to know about selecting and preparing vegetables. There is also a nice variety of recipes using the specific vegetables. I have found it an excellent addition to my collection of cookbooks.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Excellent
Review: My goodness, they cover almost every vegetable from A-Z and even sometimes tell you which cookware they tested to be the better out of the rest - such as V-slicers, potato mashers, salad spinners...even balsamic vinegar.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Veg-o-rama
Review: A well written, detailed book wherein each chapter brings a new vegetable and great ideas. I was primarily looking to make vegetables play a more central and creative role in my cooking, and this book has been the answer. You'll be carmelizing onions and braising endive in no time.
Review Summary: Finally - Vegetables Get Some Respect
Review: Vegetables have always been the Rodney Dangerfield of food: they never get any respect. They are variously beaten, cooked, stewed, molded, mashed, seasoned, sauced, and pureed to death, sometimes more than once in the same recipe. This behavior even includes places that you expect would have more respect for our botanical friends: Indian/Hindu/vegetarian, Oriental/Buddhist/vegetarian, California/vegan. The cookbook aisles are littered with the carnage of bad vegetable recipes. Properly cooking vegetables is neither easy nor fast. Correctly done, the vegetable portion of your meal often takes MORE time and/or effort than, say, the protein centerpiece of your meal.
This book qualifies as a genuine vegetable encyclopedia that you can rely on for accurate information and proper cooking methods. You get 44 vegetables. Each and every one gets several pages and a thorough treatment, including recommended prep methods and recipes. Typically, each vegetable gets a half dozen or so pages (beets and okra get 2 pages, potatoes 50). This book is an alphabetical encyclopedia of the proper way to prep and cook vegetables. It was a real joy to finally see vegetables given the respect they deserve. Be mindful, however, that this means that cooking your vegetables are no longer quick, easy, and simple.
Their prep methods for artichoke and asparagus are very good, but causes you to throw away some edible parts. Do you know the best way to ripen avocados? This and much more about vegetables will be revealed to you. Can you cook a brussel sprout that people will actually eat? Do you have to cut an "x" in the base? Did you know that there are a couple of frozen vegetables that actually pass muster with the authors? The vegetables chosen are all the standard, usual ones you will find in any supermarket. The authors have the integrity to avoid special, rare, hard to find vegetables that might be fabulous, but impossible to get unless you are a celebrity super-chef in Manhattan. A properly prepared vegetable, although just a side-dish, should be good enough, with a glass of wine, to serve as a light supper all by itself. Are the vegetables you typically prepare at home this good? I was rather surprised that squash (winter and summer) got short-shrift in this book. They are so cheap, so plentiful, so easy to get, and so good, why not devote more attention to them? The only answer I can imagine is that the staff of CI are not very fond of squash, regardless of season.
This is a truly brilliant cookbook, but I knock it down a notch for the poorly thought out format. It is designed just like their periodical, Cooks Illustrated. The format might be suitable for a magazine, but it is a serious mistake for a book designed to be a ready reference for the home cook's bookshelf.
1) Problem #1 - Side Bar Mania. Kitchen tool reviews and taste tests are randomly scattered throughout the test. They are listed in the index under `equipment' and `ingredients' respectively, right where the home cook is likely to forget that they even exist in the book. These should be collated right in front along with the TOC.
2) Problem #2 - Where are the `master recipes'? This book uses a concept they call `master recipe' for the main prep/cooking method for a vegetable plus the variations. The TOC only lists the vegetable. This might be OK for a chapter that has only one master recipe, but is a major flaw for chapters that has 15 such `master recipes'. Each and every master recipe should be listed in the TOC. As is, this book is only marginally useful as a reference.
3) Problem #3 - More Side Bar Mania. Important information about the particular vegetable tends to be buried in each chapter. In potatoes, for example, important information about their storage (and that the frig is OK for them) is buried 4/5 of the way through potato chapter in the middle of a section about French potato salads, where you will never find it unless you read the entire chapter. How is this suppose to help the home cook?
4) Problem #4 - OK, now I am just picking nits. The photographs are out of focus and kind of irritating to look at. How could a food stylist permit this to happen? OK, one baby bok choy is in focus, but the other 3 are blurry; and this flaw is true of all except one (grilled corn) of the color photos.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Great book!
Review: Has helped me to improve my vegetable consumption with cooking techniques and tasty recipes.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Perfect Vegetables
Review: This book on vegetables covers every thing you need to know about selecting and preparing vegetables. There is also a nice variety of recipes using the specific vegetables. I have found it an excellent addition to my collection of cookbooks.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Excellent
Review: My goodness, they cover almost every vegetable from A-Z and even sometimes tell you which cookware they tested to be the better out of the rest - such as V-slicers, potato mashers, salad spinners...even balsamic vinegar.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Veg-o-rama
Review: A well written, detailed book wherein each chapter brings a new vegetable and great ideas. I was primarily looking to make vegetables play a more central and creative role in my cooking, and this book has been the answer. You'll be carmelizing onions and braising endive in no time.