Amazon.com Review
First published in 1983, Theodore James's
Cultivating the Cook's Garden has been updated to take into account a few of the changes that have occurred at the American dinner table in the last 15 years--for example, the rising popularity of asparagus beans, the yard-long beans favored by cooks of Chinese cuisine. More and more cooks know of the product, and buy it when it's available in local markets, but can just as easily grow their own. James tells you how.
Cultivating the Cook's Garden assumes the reader already has some gardening experience. This isn't a book about how to establish a garden, how to create compost, how to weed and water, or how to fertilize; it's as cut-to-the-chase as a gardening book can get, yet has delightful literary merit. What James has to say about each of the plants in his book is a pleasure to read. Divided into sections on vegetables, herbs, and berries, the gardener will find detailed planting, cultivation, and cooking information on 48 vegetables from artichokes to tomatoes; 27 herbs; a list of edible flowers ranging from anise seed to thyme; and eight berries, including blackberries, currants, gooseberries, and Fraises des Bois.
Though it's small--of a size that fits neatly into a jacket pocket as you head for the garden--Cultivating the Cook's Garden is packed with the pertinent information a kitchen gardener needs to be successful. Read it and eat. --Schuyler Ingle
Book Description
Tender sweet vegetables, flesh exotic herbs, and a wonderful variety of cooking ingredients can all be grown just outside the kitchen door with the aid of The Cook's Garden. Well-known gardening writer Theodore James has completely updated and expanded his 1982 classic, The Gourmet Garden, for today's tastes and trends.
Using simple, clear instructions and up-to-the-minute sources, James shows how the gardener/cook can easily grow fresh ingredients for the finest cookery. From lemongrass (popular in fusion cooking), to tomatillos and chiles for Santa Fe-style dishes, to capers, to greens, to saffron crocus and even edible flowers -- James shows how to plant it, how to nurture it, how to harvest it, and how to prepare it.
The Cook's Garden features wonderful salad greens: arugula, escarole, mache, raddichio, mizuna, and red oakleaf lettuce. There's a section on popular herbs -- savories, marjoram, sages, verbena. The book is chock-full of notes on related topics, such as how to prepare yourown "signature" dried seasoning combinations, how to adapt instructions for small-space gardening, and many, many other growing and cooking tips.
Written with today's cook/gardener/reader in mind, the book focuses on what can be grown to expand one's cooking horizons in a minimum of garden space, with a moderate investment of time. Simple and inviting, The Cook's Garden gratifies the refined combination of tastes of today's creative cooks by bringing "haute cuisine" down to earth, just outside the kitchen door.
Just a few foods included are: arugula, asparagus, asparagus beans, belgian beets, bok choy, belgian carrots, cayenne peppers, celeriac, chinese cabbage, corn, cornichons, cress,eggplant, escarole, fennel, garlic, ginger root, haricots verts, horseradish, Kipfel Kartoffel
