Customer Reviews

More Fabulous Beans: Meatless Homestyle, Gourmet and International Recipes

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The title of this book will lead the shopper to believe that it is a sequel to Barb Bloomfield's excellent book "Fabulous Beans".

In reality it is a revised edition. Many of the recipies in "More Fabulous Beans" are the recipies from "Fabulous Beans".

I really wanted to like this book. I love beans, and I love the wide and wonderful variety of ways to prepare them that this book promises. I also love how the book is quietly vegan without ever uttering the word, implying a world where animal exploitation just doesn't exist. However, I just can't make these recipes turn out!

I am not an expert cook by any means, but with most of the time if you give me a good recipe I can make it turn out pretty good. Maybe I have chosen poorly, but I am now 0 for 4 with the recipes I have tried out of this book. Let me describe my experiences:

1) Pinto Bean Enchiladas - This recipe turned out bland, watery, and soggy. After conferring with some people who know enchiladas, they all agreed that the enchilada sauce portion of the recipe was out to lunch. It was edible, but not make-again category.

2) Pat's Baked Navy Beans - Edible, but a little bland and uninspiring. There are better baked bean recipes out there.

3) Curried Garbanzos - Starts off promising, but the end result is soupy and a little odd tasting. Again, there are far better garbanzo curries out there.

4) Navy Bean Balls with mushroom gravy - The bean balls were decent, despite the almost complete lack of spice, but the gravy was hideous. I couldn't even eat it.

Based on the experience of these four recipes, I find that this book has recipes that are bland, overly complicated, time consuming, and often skip over essential preparation details.

The biggest problem with this book is that the recipes sound tasty yet they just don't turn out, either from lack of skill by me, or a lack of instruction from the author. Either way, I will be sticking to my more trusted books from now on, and saving this one for when I'm feeling more adventurous than hungry.

Greaot ideas for bean consumption. Not so good for telling us how to cook dry beans from scratch, you still have to do trial and error til you learn what works for you. Also you don't need to buy both her books because the first one is all here.

More Fabulous Beans is a great collections of recipes using beans. I'm not sure why, but most recipe books don't have a lot of bean recipes, so this book is a real find. Everything I've tried has turned out well and it's given me lots of new ideas for bean dishes, beyond the old three bean salad and baked beans.

The Russian beet and white kidney soup is fantastic. The Black eye butternut chowder is a combination I never would have imagined, but it's really good. In fact there's a whole section on soups and chowders which are just right for fall and winter meals and are great because you can double the portions and have leftovers for days when you don't feel like cooking. There are also some very good spread recipes like the hummus and eggplant or the West indies pinto spread. Some sound a little strange reading the recipes but I was pleasantly surprised by the way they turned out.

These recipes using beans are healthy, cheap and filling. I like to use dried beans but don't always remember to soak them ahead of time so I was glad to find the Kuhn Rikon pressure cooker on amazon that I use in conjunction with this book. With a pressure cooker you can get away with soaking the beans a very short time or not at all and they still come out great.

If you like beans, this book gives you a lot of interesting ways to include them in your diet.

This is my favorite bean cookbook of all the ones I have tried. I like how she makes a little comment for each recipe to give you ideas. There is so much variety; dips, soups, bean loaves, casseroles, salads, desserts, etc. Sometimes, if a recipe seems to need more flavor, I add salt or some of the chicken seasoning from Joanne Rachor's cookbook Of These Ye May Freely Eat.

The Lima Gazpacho Salad was a favorite with my young daughter. She said she wouldn't complain if I made it everyday. The Tabouli was yummy and I used fresh peppermint from the yard. The Creamy Pinto Soup was also a favorite, a very delicious soup. My other daughter said the Spicy Pinto Casserole was heavenly. The Meatless Pinto Balls were very filling and tasty. Mine were 1 1/2" round and we topped spaghetti and sauce with. And, I really loved the falafels...and more.

I recommend this book to anyone wanting to include more beans in their menu. It's works for me as a great family recipe book. I plan to have fun trying more of these recipes.

Enhanced with kitchen savvy tips on how to prepare, cook, and freeze more than fourteen types of beans, More Fabulous Beans is a vegetarian's delight offering the kitchen cook more than one hundred meatless meals. Some of these recipes are homestyle, while others are gourmet, and yet others are drawn from international cuisines. From Mexican Black Bean Salad; Lentil Stew; Soybeans in Sweet Sauce; and Pinto Bean Enchiladas; to Melted Yeast Cheeze Sauce; Black-eyed Spirals; Anasazi Beans and Rice; and Brazilian Black Beans, every recipe showcased in the pages of More Fabulous Beans is easy to prepare, thoroughly nutritious, totally palate pleasing, and highly recommended. Also very highly recommended is legume expert Barb Bloomfield's first recipe collection, Fabulous Beans!