Everyday Greens: Home Cooking from Greens, the Celebrated Vegetarian Restaurant [Hardcover]

Annie Somerville (Author), Mayumi Oda (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 29, 2003

Everyday Greens

Home Cooking from Greens, the Celebrated Vegetarian Restaurant

For more than twenty years, San Francisco's beloved Greens Restaurant has been in the avant garde of the cooking revolution in America. Through its endlessly inventive, ever-changing menus and bestselling cookbooks, Greens has introduced millions of delighted fans to a sophisticated, meatless cuisine packed with transcendent, satisfying flavor.

The innovation continues. Everyday Greens is the first Greens book in a decade, and author Annie Somerville, executive chef since 1985, has written the most accessible cookbook yet. Greens's high level of flavor and creativity is everywhere, but the cooking is simpler, more relaxed. Here are more than 250 of the restaurant's most popular dishes fine-tuned for the home cook in straightforward recipes for the way we live today.

This is spirited cooking for every day -- from casual lunches and quick weeknight meals to family feasts and elegant entertaining. There are main-dish salads; soups that make a meal; rustic ragoûts; satisfying stews; vegetables on the grill; quick stir-fries; casseroles layered with flavor; innovative side dishes; pizzas, tortilla dishes, and savory tarts; pastas and risottos; warm beans and grains; sandwiches; salsas; pickles; and the famous Greens desserts.

The heart of Greens cooking is to use the best, freshest ingredients -- whether from the grocery store or your local farmers' market. Advice on finding and preparing these ingredients is combined with restaurant tips that simplify work in the kitchen. Through clever use of the freezer and pantry, Somerville shows how to minimize prep time with make-ahead dishes and born-again leftovers. Special features include pairing wine with Greens's food; advice on stocking the pantry with Asian ingredients, cooking oils, and dessert-making essentials; a resource guide for locally made cheeses; and the Kitchen Tool Box, a decidedly low-tech list of invaluable equipment. A final section on worm composting brings everything back to the source -- the earth -- and is sure to delight the passionate gardener.

Readers of Fields of Greens love Somerville's warm, inspiring, friend-in-the-kitchen style. And Everyday Greens is more personal, so confidence-building that even beginners will want to dash into the kitchen and start cooking.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

San Francisco Bay restaurant Greens has always had a reputation for innovative vegetarian cooking, and once more Somerville (Field of Greens) brings together more of her distinctive style in this latest volume. While the Everyday Greens of the title refers to the Zen concept of everyday mindfulness, the Buddhist teaching of bringing awareness and acceptance to every moment of everyday life, most of the recipes could be competently produced at home. Ranging in skill levels, the recipes vary in complexity but are full of flavor. Whether it's the ingredient-intensive but simple to cook Spring Stir-Fry with Peanut Sauce and Thai Basil, dense Debbie's Pecan Brownies or the composite Baguette with Tapenade, Grilled Peppers, and Fontina, all the recipes are bursting with texture and taste. Mixing the influences of world cuisine whether from the Far East, Middle East or South American, Somerville blends and melds cuisine styles with ease, drawing her inspiration from the fresh and unusual ingredients that have now become readily available. In Somerville's hands, tofu becomes another ingredient rather than a substitute. Unusually the chapter on ingredients and tools, The Kitchen Cupboard, is located at the end of the book; coupled with explanatory panels throughout the book, this section helps the home cook select items available in most markets, allowing anyone to experiment with vegetarian recipe options and lifestyle.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Adding another cookbook to the series originating from San Francisco's famous vegetarian restaurant, Greens, Annie Somerville addresses the wide world of vegetable cookery with Everyday Greens. Somerville continues the high-quality tradition of those earlier works, updating both techniques and ingredients as appropriate. Avocado and Tomato Sandwich with Chipotle Aioli makes a perfect lunch, and Penne with Roasted Butternut Squash, Brown Butter, and Sage reinterprets a classic Italian ravioli presentation. Since full, rich flavor is particularly critical in vegetarian cooking, Somerville pays close attention to making excellent stocks as bases for other dishes. Filo pastry figures strongly here, both as a wrapper for savory fillings and as a crisp base for desserts. Those who relished the earlier Greens cookbooks won't want to miss this newest addition to the series. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1St Edition edition (April 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743216253
• ISBN-13: 978-0743216258
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #286,682 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great source of salad recipes!, June 1, 2003

By 

Ms. Periwink (West Chester, PA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everyday Greens: Home Cooking from Greens, the Celebrated Vegetarian Restaurant (Hardcover)

After skimming through many new vegetarian cookbooks, I have selected Somerville's 2003 publication as seeming the most reliable and tasteful. The book includes a lot of innovative ideas, and yet, it serves well also as an everyday cooking companion. The fact that most of the dishes have been on the menu at the Greens restaurant gives me the confidence to serve them up for my guests without the usual need to preview. Whatever I have tried so far (5-6 lunches for company) has received rave reviews!

The salad chapter appeals especially. These are new, varied, and brimming with fresh California flavors. It is also an asset to have a separate dressing recipe to accompany each one. The fruit desserts are especially suitable for summer.

Since I count on using this book for many years, I appreciate the crisp, white paper, sturdy binding and cheerful paintings. There are no photographs to cramp the imagination.

A negative is the possible difficulty in locating some of the featured ingredients, but substitutes can be had mostly, and part of the adventure of cooking is to discover or search for new supplies.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of my favorite cookbooks, October 11, 2004

By 

LizB (SF Bay Area, Ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everyday Greens: Home Cooking from Greens, the Celebrated Vegetarian Restaurant (Hardcover)

I bought this book last year, when it first came out, and since then it has become of one of my favorite cookbooks. (I'm not a vegetarian, BTW.) I've cooked about twenty-odd recipes from this book, and I've been pleased with all of them. The recipes are well-written, reliable, and delicious.

The term "everyday" may be misleading to some folks. These are not recipes you throw together to put a meal on the table at the end of the workday. They're more like simplified restaurant recipes that have been adapted to the home kitchen.

Some of my favorite recipes: potato salad with green beans, corn quesadillas (addictive), and grilled fingerling potato salad. I made the tomato pizza with feta and lemon for some friends, and they swooned over it. (Then they went out and bought the cookbook.)

This is also one of the most beautiful cookbooks on my shelf. It's a visual pleasure to use this book. Kudos to the illustrator.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Exception to Several Rules: you'll love this one!, August 14, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Everyday Greens: Home Cooking from Greens, the Celebrated Vegetarian Restaurant (Hardcover)

This fine cookbook breaks a lot of rules that SHOULD be broken... Rule 1) Cookbooks from great restaurants rarely have recipes that work or are anything like as good as their fare. Not true here! Annie (her warmth makes you get on a first name basis pronto) has gone to great length to translate Greens' justifiably renowned food into working recipes for the home kitchen. Rule 2) Vegetarian food is bland, boring, brown, blah. Wrong! Annie proved, at Greens and here, that v-food is vibrant, voluptuous, varied...wholly inviting. Rule 3) Chefs not only can't write a working recipe, they can't write well, period. Annie writes with enthusiasm, precision, passion, sensuality, humor, knowledge, wit. This and PASSIONATE VEGETARIAN by Crescent Dragonwagon are my two very favorite vegetarian cookbooks, in fact cookbook period: working recipes, delectable food, sensual, personal writing. How delicious! More, please!