Professional Vegetarian Cooking [Hardcover]

Ken Bergeron (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 1999

A contemporary bible of vegetarian cooking filled with fresh and fabulous ideas for today's fine dining

Vegetarian cuisine is now more popular than ever. Increasing health and ethical concerns-and an appetite for adventure-have sparked a growing demand for attractive, appetizing, and creative vegetarian dishes that hold their own with any meat choice on the menu. This book shows how to harness traditional cooking methods and techniques to produce exciting, elegant meatless creations bursting with freshness and flavor. Moving from appetizers and side dishes to delicious entrees, breads, and desserts, Professional Vegetarian Cooking is filled with dynamic ideas for building flavor with the help of vegetable stocks and a global array of herbs, spices, oils, condiments, and more. A far cry from the rough-hewn, grain-heavy approach that once typified standard vegetarian fare, it shares recipes and tips that open up a whole new world of taste for the vegetarian palate-complete with instructions that are clearly written and easy to follow.
* Explains how to integrate vegetarian dishes into every phase of a meal
* Includes 200 ready-to-use recipes
* Lists best sources of purveyors and mail order products

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Chefs, caterers, and managers from every corner of the foodservice industry are feeling the increasing demand for attractive, appetizing, and creative vegetarian dishes. In Professional Vegetarian Cooking, award-winning chef Ken Bergeron provides all of the information needed to create sumptuous meatless dishes that will impress and delight even the most demanding vegetarians and keep them coming back for more. Professional Vegetarian Cooking is filled with dynamic ideas for building flavor using vegetable stocks, herbs, spices, and oils. Using traditional cooking techniques, this book provides step-by-step instructions on how to create peerless vegetarian dishes that are delicious and visually attractive, from savory soups and elegant entr?es to sensational side dishes and delightful desserts. This comprehensive resource provides,
* 200 recipes for incomparable vegetarian dishes using common and uncommon ingredients
* Ideas and inspiration for creating new and interesting dishes
* Helpful tips on making the transition to vegetarian cooking
* A list of the best sources for purveyors and mail-order products
The rapidly growing market for vegetarian cuisine offers enormous opportunities to those who make the effort to understand and please the discriminating vegetarian palate. Professional Vegetarian Cooking is the ideal starting point on the path to achieving that goal. It is also a boundless source of information and inspiration for serious epicureans who are interested in vegetarian cooking.

About the Author

KEN BERGERON (Kensington, CT) is a professional chef and a vegetarian. He was the first person to win gold medals for vegetarian presentations in the United States and at the 1992 Culinary Olympics in Frankfurt, Germany.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (May 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471292354
• ISBN-13: 978-0471292357
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 1.5 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #705,762 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vegan Haute Cuisine for Everyone, December 28, 1999

By 

Cecily (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional Vegetarian Cooking (Hardcover)

I am a serious home cook who has made this book her kitchen bible. The recipes contained in this book are scrumptious and remarkably free of all animal products (including eggs and dairy). As vegan cookbooks go, this book is unique. The culinary results are delicious and visually appealing. The author is a professional chef who knows how to layer in complex, yet pleasing flavors into dishes for spectacular results. Ken Bergeron really knows how to stimulate taste buds that have grown weary of the same-old, same-old. Truly innovative cuisine like this doesn't come around every day. I've made dozens of recipes presented within these pages with incredible success. Over the holidays, I followed the author's menu suggestions. I made the festive holiday menu for Christmas dinner and the hors d-oeuvres menu for an elegant cocktail party. Most of the invited guests were non-vegetarians with sophisticated taste-buds--definitely not the dry lentil loaf and brown rice crowd. I was delighted to receive enthusiastic raves and dozens of requests for the recipes. The fried oyster mushrooms, vegetable walnut and pecan pate, baby bella mushroom risotto and maple nut tart were especially big hits, but everything was devoured with gusto. This book is truly avant garde--I believe vegan cuisine will be the everyday norm for most American tables by the end of the next century. Even Time Magazine--hardly a granola rag by any stretch of the imagination-has recently predicted this dietary megatrend will happen in the near future. Undoubtedly, this book will help lead the way. No home should be without it. And, anyone making a profession out of feeding the public--pay attention, please! Customers will continue to want to live large into the next century, but that doesn't necessarily mean they want big slabs of dead animals oozing blood on their plates. Exotic fruits and vegetables, prepared with all the care and attention given to flesh-centered cuisine, will fit the bill just fine. Many trendsetters are looking for this now, but millions will follow.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy this book for all the chefs you know, June 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Professional Vegetarian Cooking (Hardcover)

I'm so happy, there's hope that the next time I have to attend a work related function, that I won't have frozen baby carrots and red peppers, with no seasonings served with rice that ended up having chicken stock in it (in other words, I didn't eat), like I did last time. The chefs at the local Chef's Association consider vegetarian cuisine to be cutting edge cuisine. This book proves it! The book will allow chefs to understand their vegetarian customers eating preferences and will result in everyone else wanting the vegetarian special. This recipes are incredibly delicious. The author shares his experiences of when he first began preparing this type of food, and also tells chefs why it makes good business sense to take advantage of the vegetarian market. It is exciting that a professional chef has finally written a vegetarian book for professionals, though any vegetarian cook would enjoy this book. Bravo!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vegan Haute Cuisine for Everyone, December 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Professional Vegetarian Cooking (Hardcover)

I am a serious home cook who has made this book her kitchen bible. The recipes contained in this book are scrumptious and remarkably free of all animal products (including eggs and dairy). As vegan cookbooks go, this book is unique. The culinary results are delicious and visually appealing. The author is a professional chef who knows how to layer in complex, yet pleasing flavors into dishes for spectacular results. Ken Bergeron really knows how to stimulate taste buds that have grown weary of the same-old, same-old. Truly innovative cuisine like this doesn't come around every day. I've made dozens of recipes presented within these pages with incredible success. Over the holidays, I followed the author's menu suggestions. I made the festive holiday menu for Christmas dinner and the hors d-oeuvres menu for an elegant cocktail party. Most of the invited guests were non-vegetarians with sophisticated taste-buds--definitely not the dry lentil loaf and brown rice crowd. I was delighted to receive enthusiastic raves and dozens of requests for the recipes. The fried oyster mushrooms, vegetable walnut and pecan pate, baby bella mushroom risotto and maple nut tart were especially big hits, but everything was devoured with gusto. This book is truly avant garde--I believe vegan cuisine will be the everyday norm for most American tables by the end of the next century. Even Time Magazine--hardly a granola rag by any stretch of the imagination-has recently predicted this dietary megatrend will happen in the near future. Undoubtedly, this book will help lead the way. No home should be without it. And, anyone making a profession out of feeding the public--pay attention, please! Customers will continue to want to live large into the next century, but that doesn't necessarily mean they want big slabs of dead animals oozing blood on their plates. Exotic fruits and vegetables, prepared with all the care and attention given to flesh-centered cuisine, will fit the bill just fine. Many trendsetters are looking for this now, but millions will follow.