Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes from a Modern Kitchen Garden [Hardcover]

Jeanne Kelley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 25, 2008

Like many of today’s home gardeners, Jeanne Kelley’s backyard kitchen garden is a means to indulge her desire for fresh, organic, and flavor-rich produce. Just minutes outside of downtown Los Angeles, this same backyard is also home to Kelley’s pet goat and Ameraucana chickens, which provide her with a plentiful amount of milk and sky blue eggs that often feature in Kelley’s internationally inspired dishes. Now she shares more than 150 of her recipes, all of which incorporate new and authentic ways to take advantage of local and seasonal foods and incorporate the multi-ethnic flavors into your everyday meals. This remarkable cookbook presents a contemporary version of field-to-table cooking that hails from a region where home chefs prune their kitchen gardens in the shadow of metropolitan cities and year-round farmers’ markets provide heirloom vegetables that inspire classic and enticing dishes. Capitalizing on her 20 years as a Bon Appetit contributor, Kelley’s recipes are simple and spectacular. With strategies for both weeknight cooking and special occasions, Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes is the essential manual for all who hunger to create quick and healthy meals with flair. In addition to the many mouthwatering recipes, Kelley provides readers with tips and menus for entertaining, plus a thorough kitchen garden primer that celebrates the simple joy of growing your own produce-including discussion on small container and community gardens, raising and keeping backyard chickens, composting, and growing your own exotic ingredients.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Lovely and practical: That's the rare standard met in Jeanne Kelley's Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes From a Modern Kitchen Garden. The dishes pictured do look good enough to eat. Stare hard enough at the Fig and Blue Cheese Crostini for Two Seasons, and you appreciate the smart thinking of an appetizer that can work with whichever type of that fruit is available. A side dish of Brussels Sprouts With Marjoram and Pine Nuts, containing shallots and a little cream, shows a depth of creativity. And Blood Orange Granita With Vanilla Ice Cream — which can also be made with Valencia oranges — couldn't be simpler or more stunning.”—Washington Post, February 27, 2008

“Kelley (offers advice) on raising backyard hens and cultivating green garlic. Apartment dwellers with no prospect of planting pole beans and suburbanites whose tidy plots aren’t zoned for livestock will feel at a disadvantage reading these books. Even so, many of the recipes are worthwhile and most can be created with ingredients available for sale, if not in Aisle 1 at the supermarket.”—The New York Time Style Magazine, Spring 2008

“The only problem with "Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes," the new cookbook from Jeanne Kelley, is that you won't want to spill anything on it. That's because this beautifully designed compilation, replete with mouthwatering color photographs, looks and feels more like a coffee-table book than a recipe collection. Still, if you lug Ms. Kelley's offering into the kitchen, you won't be disappointed.”—The Christian Science Monitor, April 2008

“A smart and sensible guide to cooking, in all its colors … Lovely and practical.”—The Washington Post, February 2008

About the Author

Jeanne Kelley attended the La Varenne Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. Since then, she has been affiliated with Bon Appetit magazine for 20 years. Kelley is also a frequent contributor to Cooking Light magazine, and many of her recipes and articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Natural Health, Islands, and Spa magazines. She lives in Los Angeles with her landscape designer husband and two teenage daughters.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Running Press (March 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0762431830
• ISBN-13: 978-0762431830
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 11.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #261,298 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #60 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Organic Cooking

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not really from a kitchen garden...., July 16, 2009

By 

Cook and New Gardener (Washington state, United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes from a Modern Kitchen Garden (Hardcover)

I've had this cookbook for a while, and it is a lovely one. The pictures are beautiful, the recipes are varied and sound delicious, and the few that I've made have turned out well. As a cookbook, it's great.

BUT, it's not really about "Recipes from a Modern Kitchen Garden" as the subtitle suggests. This is the first year I've had a kitchen garden myself and have been looking through my cookbooks with an eye for using what is growing like crazy in my garden - greens, summer squash, turnips, broccoli, potatoes, carrots, beets, beans, tomatoes, corn, you know, the usual stuff. I thought this would be a great resource for recipes, but looking at it again, from the perspective of finding recipes that would help me use my bounty, and it's a flop. The book is heavily meat-centric with lots of recipes for seafood, beef and pork (I don't grow any of those in my garden). The dessert section is luscious, but with a focus on chocolate chip cookies, chocolate layer cake, hazelnut coffee cake, and the like, it sure doesn't help use the strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries that my garden is producing. There are some lovely side vegetable dishes (roasted carrots and fennel caught my eye), but many of the salad recipes are based on beans or grains with herbs and cheese and nuts - more things that don't grow in my garden.

So, while I can recommend the book and I agree that it's both coffee-table and kitchen-counter worthy, it isn't as advertised. Don't expect lots of suggestions for using things from your own Modern Kitchen Garden.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicous, sophisticated, easy international food, May 31, 2008

By 

Brunie Feliciano (Oceanside New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes from a Modern Kitchen Garden (Hardcover)

I just purchased this book and I'm in love......it is a beautiful book with emphasis on simplicty, flavor, and sophisication. I love the idea of home grown foods....the full-page photography and artistic text are fabulous...we just made the chocolate chip cookies and it was fabulously delicious. I have collected many chocolate chip cookie recipes and this is the best one....although I must confess that I used good bittersweet chopped chocolate instead of the milk chocolate chips. Another great aspect of this book is that it utilizes exotic flavors and incorporates world cuisines, such as Cuban, Morocco, Greece, Middle Eastern, Mexican...the results are delicious, elegant, and contemporary. For any serious cook, this is a treasure.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a fabulous cookbook!, April 25, 2008

By 

C. Renick (Altadena, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes from a Modern Kitchen Garden (Hardcover)

I love this book! The unique recipes are easy to follow and feature bright, fresh, delicious flavors. The simple kitchen garden guide gives great advice on growing your own ingredients. I collect cookbooks and this is definitely my new favorite!