Customer Reviews

Lee Bailey's Tomatoes

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This is a short, compact cookbook specializing in tomato recipes. It is beautfifully illustrated with some of the finest food photography I've ever seen. The recipes are uniformly straight-forward, requiring only basic ingredients and fairly standard equipment. The modestly competent home cook will have no difficulty with most of the recipes here. If you've ever stared at your tomato patch wondering what the heck to do with all those tomatoes, this is the book for you. I've made almost every recipe herein and loved almost every one. But the tomato spoonbread is my favorite. Its almost worth the price of the book just for that recipe.

Lee Bailey, who wrote not only about cooking but also about having food in your life for comfort, company and cravings, wrote a series of small books about individual ingredients: tomatoes, berries, and corn. These slim volumes display the flavor and versatility of simple ingredients -- all of which are at their best in the summertime. To read each is to wonder how extraordinary a single ingredient may be. In Lee Bailey's Tomatoes there are starters, main courses, sides and salads, and even a dessert. The recipes include chutney, salsa, preserves, tomato oil, tomato sandwiches, tomato gougere, tomato bread pudding, and a few dozen more. My favorite? A tomato vinaigrette that's spooned warm over steamed green beans. Extraordinary!

In addition to his endlessly appealing recipes is Lee Bailey's exuberance for cooking and eating. This is the kind of cookbook that because, or despite, its recipes, will make you a better cook. I treasure this little book and as I place it among my scores of cookbooks, it will always be one of my favorites.