Customer Reviews

365 Vegetarian Soups

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am an avid cook who cooks at least once a day - and usually a dish I have never made before. Consequently, I thought that this book would increase the number of recipes to be tried by quite a bit and was very exited to recieve it. Obviously, as my 2 star rating suggests, my expectations were not met - and here is why:

True to the name of the book, Gillespie does include a plethora of recipes - I didn't count them but I'm pretty confident that the number must be 365 or at least close. However, almost none of the recipes sound as though they might actually be delicious. I found them to be rather uninspired and uninspiring and keep thinking that Gillespie sacrificed the idea of good and wholesome soup for being as fancy and innovative as possible. The overabundance of "fancy" soup is rather burdensome when you are simply looking for a straightforward soup. The back-cover for example, lists several recipes that fall into this category - Brandied Strawberry Soup, Chocolate Mint Soup, etc. just don't do it for me.

When I finally managed to locate a recipe that sounded like I would enjoy it, I had to discover that some of the listed ingredients never showed up in the actual recipe - this should have been caught by an editor. The soup, however, turned out quite well once I had figured out when to add the missing igredients.

Unfortunately, there is more: Gillespie likes to included such illustrious items as dried potato buds, dried onions, etc. to his recipes - I would think that cooking involves fresh ingredients when available. While I understand that not everyone can get fresh galangal and that, therefore, it is helpful to used dried galangal in recipes, last time I checked, potatoes and onions were readily available pretty much anywhere.

In addition, several recipes list chicken stock or fish sauce as ingredients (sometimes optional, sometimes as an alternative for a vegetarian item). Personally, if you publish a vegetarian cookbook, I want to see vegetarian ingredients only.

And finally, one recepie had me laughing in disbelief. Gillespie lists a recipe for a "Super Fast Soup.: Now, if you were in the market for a super-fast soup, what would you do? I'd open a can of soup - and so would Gillespie. To make it a real recipe in his book, he suggests adding frozen veggies and water. Wow, I am so glad I have a cookbook to guide me through this difficult process.Unbelievable.

As is now truly obvious, I do not like this book and I will certainly not recommend it. There are much better soup books avaliable and unless you are on a quest to own every single vegetarian soup cook book ever published, I would strongly advise you to stay clear of this book

...especially when the weather turns cold in the fall and throughout the winter and early spring months. Most of the soups that I prepare are simple and nutritious. And while I enjoy the few soups that I regularly make, I wanted to expand my collection of recipes. So I was delighted to receive a copy of 365 Vegetarian Soups. Think of it, a different soup for every day of the year!

Gregg R. Gillespie's soup recipes are contained in the following sections: vegetable stocks, basic soups, fruit soups, cream soups, hearty soups, chilled soups and dessert soups. The ingredient lists and directions are well laid out and easy to follow. Each recipe also contains the number of servings.

As the title states, the recipes are vegetarian, not vegan. While some of the recipes can be easily modified for vegan diets, others containing several dairy products will be more difficult to modify. There are some recipes, like Ginger Melon Soup and Vegetable Soup With Lemon & Mint that require no alterations for vegans. And with 365 recipes, there are sure to be numerous recipes that everyone will enjoy.
--Reviewed by N. Glenn Perrett