Customer Reviews

Almost Vegetarian: A Primer for Cooks Who Are Eating Vegetarian Most of the Time, Chicken & Fish Some of the Time, & Altogether Well All of the Time

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Remember when growing up as a child you abhored vegetables? Moms across the nation have spent vast hours in cajoling their little darlings into eating those "things" that were good for them. Now as an adult we're told that we need to eat more vegetable if we care about our health. Sigh. We reluctantly acquiese but still we hate those green (or not so green) things.

Hate no more as I have done in coming across this delightful cookbook. If you still love meat but need more veggies in your diet please explore this text. Inside you will come across mouth watering recipes that are easy to make. And the vegetable dishes taste fantastic. You don't have to commit to vegetarianism in order to enjoy the varied meals presented which also include chicken and fish.

Almost Vegetarians isn't preachy like Mom in trying to convince you to eat vegetables. It is a sensible guide which offers a variety of ways in which those things can be made delicious for our palets. It also contains advice on purchasing the proper cookware, buying mail order and a great bibliography. If you weren't sold on vegetables before, you will be with this book. Have a great meal!

I have tried several of the recipes in this book and found all of them to be delicious. Most selections are relatively low fat with lots of flavor. It's perfect for individuals who eat meat occasionally. All recipes that call for poultry or fish also have suggestions for keeping it vegetarian. Sorry, this doesn't have many vegan recipes, although the vegans I know are pretty clever enough to make substitutions

I have now made several of the recipes in this book, and have found many of them to be lacking in some way. Most take WAY more prep time than is quoted. Many of the recipes end up bland tasting. I've taken to having my mother, who is a great cook, review the recipes and give me spicing hints. Also, I'd like to echo the person who said the recipes lack liquid. The Minestrone Soup turned out like a stew; hardly any broth. The Chicken and Lentil Stew had NO liquid. Beware: if you make the Stuffed Grape Leaves, you'll need double the amount of leaves quoted to use all your stuffing.

On the plus side, some of the recipes turned out great and very tasty. The Pumpkin Risotto was excellent and the Chicken and Lentil Stew was tasty even though it wasn't really a stew. I love all the cooking definitions and the vegetable guide. Those were really useful.

Overall, don't make these recipes for the first time to impress someone. The recipes are great bases, but you'll need to make it more than once to figure out what to add and do differently. Don't buy this if you don't know how to adjust recipes. The guides and tips throughout the book were very helpful to a relative newbie in the kitchen like me.

Before making any one of these dishes, one should read through the recipe to make sure it makes sense. For example, the recipe for "Chicken Stewed with Fennel, Tomatoes, and Saffron" calls for major amounts of vegetables, plus 4 chicken legs with thighs. One is supposed to put all the ingredients in a glass bowl to marinade overnight. Please note, only one cup of liquid is used. How can one marinate all these ingredients in one cup of liquid? That's what I asked myself when I ended up with a huge bowl of ingredients and miniscule amount of liquid. Another questionable recipe is found on page 197, "Couscous with Vegetables." Here again, the recipe calls for sauteing a large amount of vegetables and seasonings with just one tbl. of oil and 2 tbls. of liquid. I would not recommend this book nor would I buy another book by this author.

Shaw's cookbook has a sumptuous Italian flair, given that it was tested and written while the author was living in Milan. She balances the Old World savor of herbed asparagus torta, risotto with mussels, potato frittata, rice stuffing with pine nuts and dried cherries, and braised chicken breasts tapenade, with American innovations like sweet potato pancakes (cut with plain potatoes and ricotta cheese) and chilled corn chowder, and international touches such as chickpea curry, couscous with vegetables and fish, and tea steamed chicken or bean curd.

Each recipe is accompanied by preparation and cooking times and nutritional information. Many also include serving suggestions and variations.

The book opens with a cooking primer describing basic techniques and a buying and storing guide for vegetables. In addition cooking tips, such as how to clean various shellfish, or press tofu, or microwave vegetables, or even clean lettuce, are scattered throughout the book.

Shaw's emphasis is on fresh, naturally low-fat foods. Most recipes are simple to prepare if not always quick and will appeal to cooks of any level. Especially useful for those trying to sneak a few meatless meals into the dinner routine.

I never really bothered to learn how to cook. My extended family does it -- and does it well -- almost as second nature, but for some reason, the love (and the know-how) of preparing wonderful food never made its way down to me.

Then I started broadening my tastes, and then I got engaged. Suddenly, I wanted to learn how to cook. I made peace with the kitchen over the course of a summer, and then I decided we'd need to be friends. I borrowed my mom's cookbooks and flipped enthusiastically through the pages, but everything was meat, and everything contained words like broil, blanch, and braise, and I didn't even know what those words meant, let alone how to do them.

I found Diana Shaw's ALMOST VEGETARIAN in a used book store for [just a little money]. I loved the format, the nutrition information, the glossary of terms, the how-to boxes (ex: how to clean a leek), the appendecies on how to select fruits and vegetables for best taste, etc. I flipped through it, and right away I saw ten recipes I wanted to try. With my fiance, I got to work immediately, and we have both loved the results so far. Many of the recipes take a long time to make, and some call for specialized ingredients, but there are time saving do-ahead tips for each selection, and exact instructions on how (and how long) each can be preserved (before or after completion) and where to find some of the more obscure ingredients.

If you're vegetarian, mostly vegetarian (like me), or you just want to cook more with fruits and veggies, try this book. Some recipes may take longer than expected, especially the first time you make them, but the vast majority are worth the wait. Kudos to Diana Shaw!

This is an excellent cookbook for the millions of people out there who aren't strict vegetarians, but have cut red meat out of their diets. Also, this is great for those who are moving -- slowly or more rapidly -- in the direction of either total vegetarianism, or perhaps "pesco-vegetarian" (veggie except for some fish). Personally, I made my transition to 99% vegetarian (occasionally I will eat salmon) over a period of several years, first cutting out red meat about 12 years ago, then reducing poultry consumption until totally eliminating it from my diet about 4 or 5 years ago, and now am almost completely vegetarian. If you are strictly "vegan," you might not like this book, and the meat recipes could also be annoying to strict vegetarians, but overall, I think this book is a very useful and practical guide for those moving -- for health, environmental, or ethical reasons -- towards a more plant-based diet. And in my opinion, there's nothing "fishy" about that!!

We've had this book for a few years and have found it to be a very useful book, especially for side dishes (since we are not completely vegetarian). It inspired me to try out veggies I had never prepared before. The "fresh vegetable directory" section is a great resource on how to store veggies, how long they keep, peak season, etc. There are also make-ahead recipes, great for entertaining. Some of the hit recipes with our guests are the winter squash gratin and the mediterranean eggplant and peppers. One that sounded great but didn't turn out for us was the roasted red pepper terrine. Overall though, this is a great book.

This book has excellent, and very creative recipies for the "Almost Vegetarian". It is a celebration of food as well as living healthy.

If your goal is to be a vegetarian, you should have this book. It is very difficult to jump right into being meatless... especially in the fast food burger joint world we live in. This book can help you make the transfer, without going "cold turkey". It will retain usefulness even after you have stopped eating meat because most of the recipies are completely vegetarian, and all are very tasty.

I was soooo hopeful when I got this book... seemed too good to be true, exactly what I was looking for... however...

1) Many of the recipes take too long to make, are too involved for every day cooking, or are incomplete/not well thought out;
2) The book is artistic looking but difficult to read - two columns on most pages and one recipe can be spread over multiple pages. The artist fonts and styles just make the book so busy to look at... I just kept getting discouraged.

Man, it was a great idea, just not executed very well. I suggest looking at Vegetarian Express Lane Cookbook instead.