Customer Reviews

The Bean Bible: A Legumaniac's Guide To Lentils, Peas, And Every Edible Bean On The Planet!

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have become very judicious about the cookbooks I buy because I am tired of finding only a few recipes that I would actually use. Now, I check cookbooks out from the library to give them a test drive. I checked out "The Bean Bible" a few weeks ago and I had to buy a copy for myself before I returned it because I just couldn't be without it. I have been trying to find more ways of incorporating beans into my diet because they are so healthful and this book was the key to finally achieving success. I would honestly make 90% of the recipes in this book...and it is jam-packed with recipes. This cookbook is so good that I broke my own rule of never buying a cookbook without a picture of each recipe. This book actually has no pictures of the recipes but I don't care! The incredible variety of recipes and the information provided about this food staple are both wonderful. I would highly recommend this book.

This book provides a wide range of bean recipes, from "Roasted Gigot (leg) of Lamb with Flageolet Gratin" and "Ravioli with Spring Greens Filling and Creamy White Bean and Sage Sauce" to more basic recipes like "Senate Bean Soup" and "Boston Baked Beans with Steamed Brown Bread". There are plenty of vegetarian recipes, which are marked as such at the top of the page. There are recipes for every kind of legume under the sun, not just the common varieties. On the down side, these are not generally recipes that can be made quickly, and there is no nutrition information provided. This is truly an amazing collection of interesting and varied recipes!

From skillet-roasted chicken with black-eyed peas and savory to a one-pot Beef, Bean and Barley Casserole, Bean Bible is packed with a range of bean dishes from appetizers to side dishes and desserts, and will please any who want to use the versatile bean as a staple in their diet. No photos, but the easy recipes don't need them.

I have used many of the recipes in this book and they have all turned out well and were delicious. The information on beans provided in the beginning of the book is excellent and thorough and the author is obviously very knowledgeable and a talented cook. Here's why I only give it three stars:
1. Ingrediants used in many of the recipes can be obscure or hard to find, especially if you do not live in major metropolitan area with good access to ethnic and/or specialty food stores.
2. While none of the recipes I have tried are difficult, many of them are very time consuming and require a lot of preparation. This is not a book for someone looking for quick and easy family dinners.
3. This is not a book for vegetarians or people looking for a lot of meatless entree options as many of the recipes center on meat or have meat ingrediants.
4. The recipes in this book cover all corners of legume world so if you're looking for mostly recipes that center on beans as people commonly think of them (black beans, kidney beans, navy beans, garbanzos, etc.) this book may not be for you.

From skillet-roasted chicken with black-eyed peas and savory to a one-pot Beef, Bean and Barley Casserole, Bean Bibleis packed with a range of bean dishes from appetizers to side dishes and desserts, and will please any who want to use the versatile bean as a staple in their diet. No photos, but the easy recipes don't need them.

This book is quickly becoming one of my favorite cookbooks. Each recipe begins with a descriptive paragraph containing historical information about the dish or specific recollections from the author as to the origin or the travels that led to its creation. It is imaginative, innovative, and very informative. I really love it.

The information in the first few chapters regarding all the different kinds of beans and how to cook them is very useful. I learned a lot I didn't know, even though I've been cooking lots of beans for years. However my biggest complaint is that, while not claiming to be a vegetarian cookbook, one might reasonably expect that something called "The Bean Bible" might be more vegetarian than not. But most of the recipes in this book call for meat of some kind, and many I would say are even more meat-based than bean-based. This is a real disappointment to me since I am a vegetarian. It's easy enough to replace the odd meat item in a recipe with a soy based meat item, but these recipes rely very heavily on meat and many do not lend themselves to substitutions. I would only recommend this book to hearty meat eaters.

I bought the book because beans are so healthy and since they are a prebiotic food they are good for a number of degenerative diseases (especially candida). The recipes are so good that I don't even feel like I'm cooking for health reasons! I would recommend this book to anybody who has a discriminating palate.

This author really did her homework and has given us much information about beans and many excellent recipes. The recipes are not mostly simple in my view, however. I find a goodly number of ingredients in many. So if you define simple as having only 3-5 ingredients, know that this book is more complex overall. It's an excellent recipe collection.

Fabulous book. My friend and I both have this book and every recipe is a winner.