Fast, Fresh & Green [Paperback]

Susie Middleton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 2010

This new bible for all things vegetable from Fine Cooking's Vegetable Queen is ideal for the millions of cooks who want to get more veggies into their daily diet--and want to feed their families deliciously. Susie Middleton shares her love of great-tasting veggies with a guide to stocking up the pantry, shopping for vegetables, and cooking those veggies in 9 different ways. Fast, Fresh & Green is uniquely organized by technique so that cooks can add new ways to cook veggies to their weeknight repertoires. More than 100 recipes for side dishes--many that can double as starters or main dishes, and many that are vegan--include Spinach with Shallots and Parmigiano, Sweet Potato Mini Fries with Limey Dipping Sauce, Roasted Broccoli with Two Dipping Sauces, Braised Fingerlings with Rosemary and Mellow Garlic, and Summer Vegetable Ragout. Fast, Fresh & Green is an excellent resource for vegetarians and omnivores alike.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Not all these recipes are fast, nor do they all feature green veggies (nor are they consciously ecofocused). The subtitle explains it better: this rainbow of appealing recipes is for those who adore vegetable dishes and want more than an afterthought chapter dedicated to them. Middleton, a former editor-at-large for Fine Cooking magazine, divides recipes by cooking style, instructing readers in braising, hands-on sautéing, stir-frying, grilling, and more. She offers dishes—braised fingerlings with rosemary and mellow garlic; sautéed carrots with warm olive and mint dressing; stir-fried swiss chard with pine nuts and balsamic butter; and grill-roasted bell peppers with goat cheese and cherry tomato dressing—with layers of complexity that heighten but don't overwhelm the flavors of the intended stars, the vegetables. And she employs interesting contrasts—savory and sweet, for example—in recipes such as vanilla and cardamom glazed acorn squash rings; roasted turnips and pears with rosemary-honey drizzle; and gingery sweet potato and apple sauté with toasted almonds that are likely to tempt even the vegetable-averse. Fink's photos—mostly of green veggies, perhaps in a nod to the misnomer title—show lima beans and peas as mouth-watering, decadent treats. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Author

I couldn't be happier with my first cookbook, Fast, Fresh & Green. It's beautiful (thank you to Chronicle Books and my fabulous photographer Ben Fink!), and I feel like my mission--to help people learn more easy and delicious ways to cook vegetables--really comes to life on these pages. When I was Editor of Fine Cooking magazine, I noticed that our vegetable side dish features were always very popular, that folks really wanted to cook more vegetables but struggled with how to cook them and with making dishes that everyone in the family would like. I could relate! As a little girl, I was such a picky eater that my mother let me put sour cream on my vegetables just to get them down me. But that all changed when I started to cook for myself, went to culinary school, worked in great restaurants, and began to understand that vegetables don't need to be handled with kid gloves. In fact, the kiss of high heat brings out their sweetness; and roasting, braising, sauteing, and grilling are all great ways to make vegetables tasty.

To that end, I wanted my book to be organized by technique (instead of being just another recipe collection). So I developed 9 great ways to cook vegetables (8 are quick and perfect for weeknights; the ninth is a slower-but-worth-it bonus gratin chapter), and also included a master recipe for each technique that you can customize with your own flavor choices. But realizing that a lot of cooks just like to jump into a recipe to get started, I've included more than 90 other recipes, too, so that you can get friendly with vegetables however you like. I hope you enjoy Fast, Fresh & Green, and I promise you that you'll definitely find at least one (hopefully many) new go-to weeknight vegetable dishes in this book. 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (April 28, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811865665
• ISBN-13: 978-0811865661
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 0.8 x 10 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (95 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #51 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Vegetables & Vegetarian > Vegetables

More About the Author

After a long career in magazine editing and professional cooking, Susie Middleton returned to her first love--writing--in January of 2008. The former Editor (and current Editor at Large) for Fine Cooking magazine, Susie is the author of Fast, Fresh, & Green (Chronicle Books, April 2010) and the host of her website, www.sixburnersue.com, where she blogs about cooking and growing vegetables.

Way back when, Susie graduated from Peter Kump's New York Cooking School (now called The Institute of Culinary Eductation, or ICE), and later on was inducted into their inaugural Alumni Hall of Achievement. Along the way, she had the fabulous experience of cooking at Al Forno restaurant in Providence, R.I., with chefs Johanne Kileen and George Germon, and then worked for a busy caterer and market in Newport, Rhode Island, where she first started developing her own recipes. In 1996, Susie joined up with what was then a new magazine from The Taunton Press in Newtown, Connecticut--Fine Cooking. During her years at the magazine, in addition to overseeing the development of the magazine, the special issues program, and the website, Susie wrote dozens of recipe features, many on her specialty--vegetable cooking.

These days, Susie lives, writes, cooks, and grows vegetables on the island of Martha's Vineyard. She was consulting editor for the startup of Edible Vineyard magazine in 2009, and consults for Edible Communities Publications, which now includes 62 Edible magazines nationwide. In addition to blogging on her own site, Susie also occasionally blogs about sustainable food on the Green Page of the Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com/susie-middleton).

Susie organized her first cookbook, Fast, Fresh & Green, by cooking technique--rather than by ingredient or dish--so that she could help people add new ways to cook vegetables to their every day repertoires. The book has 9 great ways to cook vegetables. Eight of those techniques--from quick-roasting and quick-braising to stir-frying and even no-cooking--are perfect for weeknights. The ninth technique--baking gratins--is a slower-but-worth-it idea for weekends. The recipes, which use more than 50 vegetables, are designed to be side dishes, though many can move to the center of the plate. Sample recipes include: Quick-Roasted Cauliflower with Zesty Orange-Olive Dressing; Sweet Potato "Mini-Fries" with Limey Dipping Sauce; Sauteed Sugar Snap Peas with Salami Crisps, and Stir Fried Swiss Chard with Pine Nuts and Balsamic Butter.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

117 of 118 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Waaay beyond steamed broccoli! Gourmet, yet easy, dishes May 3, 2010

By Debbie Lee Wesselmann TOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Length: 1:46 Mins

I haven't tried a recipe in this cookbook that I haven't loved. Even my husband, who only tolerates vegetables, likes the interesting flavor combinations. The best part is that I now have fantastic recipes to dress up vegetables when I entertain. This is not a vegetarian cookbook, however, since a few recipes contain ingredients such as pancetta and chicken broth, but they can be easily converted.

Not everything is fast. Not everything is green. But it is all freshly delicious. In this video, I show my own results with the recipes as well as give glimpses of what the cookbook contains.

-- Debbie Lee Wesselmann

64 of 67 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A really impressive collection of vegetable dishes April 30, 2010

By Esther Schindler TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The premise behind Susie Middleton's Fast, Fresh, and Green is that you want to cook interesting side dishes and vegetable accompaniments, but you don't always have a lot of time to putter in the kitchen. I can get behind that. On too many occasions, I find that I put all my energy into the entree, and I end up with ordinary (read: relatively dull) steamed vegetables alongside. I wanted something more for veggies than "What do we have in the freezer, honey?" without giving myself yet another complex dish to cook. On a weeknight, no less.

The "fast" part comes from you spending a few minutes cutting ingredients that ordinarily take a long time to cook (such as potatoes) into smaller pieces. Most recipes promise to be fridge-to-table in 30 minutes. Although several could be a meal in themselves (or they would if you added extra protein, like cheese), these recipes are primarily meant to be served with something, and Middleton usually provides guidance about what a dish would go with. (Often, it means the "with" can be simple, such as a roast chicken. You don't have to knock yourself out on a school night.)

The book is organized by cooking method, such as quick-roasting, stir frying, or grilling, and an introductory section discusses items you should have in your pantry and how to buy and store vegetables. Three quarters of the 90 recipes have no meat, making them suitable (though not optimized) for vegetarians. This is a very readable cookbook, too; that didn't surprise me because I've enjoyed so many of the author's articles in Fine Cooking over the years.

The key point, however, is that these recipes are _good_. This week, I made the harvest gratin of butternut squash, corn, and leeks, which is among the more complex dishes in the book (certainly suitable for Thanksgiving, but I'm sure it will appear on my table a few more times before then). And it's not at all complex, really; it took about 15 minutes of prep time and then 40 minutes in the oven (during which I cooked a pork chop to fill out the meal). *Delicious.* This weekend's shopping list will include the ingredients for at least a few more of her recipes, such as roasted Brussels sprouts with orange butter sauce, or sauteed asparagus with pancetta and parmigiano, or stir-fried carrots with ginger, lime, and cilantro. As you can tell, these all use familiar foods, but in a way that's practically guaranteed to make your family say, "Can you pass the vegetables?"

I own lots of cookbooks, and probably 20 of them are devoted to vegetables or vegetarian dishes. This won't replace my copy of Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, or On the Side, but it absolutely complements them. I'm very glad I picked up Fast, Fresh, and Green from my Amazon Vine selection. Recommended.

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast, Fresh & Green is a Keeper! May 6, 2010

By M. Hill TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Susie Middleton is a trained French chef and former editor and current editor-in-charge of Fine Cooking magazine. The 90 vegetable recipes are organized by preparation method - roasting, sautéing, no cooking, grilling, stir frying and recipes that require two methods of cooking. The recipes are wonderful, but be warned that these are not stark vegetable dishes made for only the health food crowd, and vegetarians will need to make slight alterations to some of the recipes. I believe the author stated that 75 percent of the 90 recipes are vegetarian. The focus is on fresh ideas and delicious dishes, not low fat, so the dishes may contain butter and cream, etc.

The book is a large paperback, and except for the middle of the book, refuses to lay open on its own, so a cookbook holder will be useful. The paper quality is good and I found spills wiped up easily. The index is comprehensive and makes finding recipes by ingredient a breeze.

Photographs are sprinkled throughout the pages, but only twenty-two of the dishes are pictured. Annoyingly, some of the photographs are wasted on stacks of potatoes, tomatoes or squash. The reader undoubtedly knows what those vegetables look like and would have benefited from a few more photographs of the prepared dishes. If the pages with photographs were divided into quarters, with little if any additional cost, each dish could have been pictured.

Cookbooks are primarily tools for use in the kitchen, and should be constructed with ease of use in mind. For example, using bold and pale fonts make the recipes difficult to read from a standing position while the book rests on the countertop. Providing nutritional information would also be appreciated. These are decisions the publisher makes, not the author, and given the quality of the recipes, are not enough to downgrade the book even slightly.

In preparation for cooking, Middleton lists a modest inventory of what should be in the cupboard, on the counter, in the liquor cabinet, in the fridge, in the freezer and in the spice cabinet. The list is refreshingly reasonable, and although I didn't have every item, I had most of them and was familiar enough with the rest to have no qualms about adding them to my pantry. Most people who cook will probably already have eighty percent of the ingredients on hand.

I prepared Quick-Braised Green Beans with Pomegranate-Balsamic Pan Sauce. This recipe had a delectable sauce and changed my view of simple green beans forever. Next I prepared Spinach with Shallots and Parmigiano, which contains a hint of cream. The dish is equally delicious the next day, served cold for lunch. Gingery Sweet Potato and Apple Saute with Toasted Almonds is savory and a delicious alternative to basic sweet potato recipes. And, Double-Lemon Ginger Carrot Salad is so delicious, I will prepare it frequently. Actually, I enjoyed everything I tested and will definitely make all of the dishes again. I plan to continue plowing my way through the book. The author suggests serving a few of the dishes together as a main meal, and considering the imaginative combinations she has created, the recipes are worthy of taking center stage.

Middleton has a decidedly casual, unpretentious tone to her writing. I enjoyed her narrative throughout the book, and although not a novice in the kitchen, I learned from her. The book has clear instructions and would be suitable for a new cook or an experienced one. This cookbook is a keeper, worthy of space on my already crowded cookbook shelves.