Customer Reviews

The Sustainable Kitchen: Passionate Cooking Inspired by Farms, Forests and Oceans

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OK, let's get the disclosures out of the way: my husband and I are fortunate to live near Ashland, OR and we are huge fans of the Peerless Restaurant. I was also fortunate to be one of the recipe testers while they were writing their book. That said, this is a great cookbook with very do-able recipes that any home cook with a little bit of experience should be able to do. I tried 6 of the recipes during the testing phase and a couple of others since the book just came out and they were all winners.

I might not be able to duplicate the beautiful presentations that Stu and Mary offer at Peerless but the flavors of the home-cooked versions as compared to the restaurant versions are right on. The recipes give clear instructions, advice regarding advance preparations, ideas for substitutions, and wine recommendations.

Interspersed with the recipes are essays on how to make food choices that are good for our planet, eating seasonally, and interviews with artisanal food producers which give the reader an appreciation for the foods we eat and an understanding of how they are grown and produced.

This is an excellent, fun-to-read introduction to sustainable and seasonable cooking that tastes great too!

The intent of most vegetable gardeners extends beyond the carefully nurtured ecosystem to the plate. An early entry into the gardening cookbook category, The Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash (Knopf, 1982), has long been a favorite of mine, with its delicious recipes side-by-side with planting and cultivating suggestions and the sometimes too-precious stories about the famous made-for-PBS garden. But that book stops short of integration into the wider food equation, the systems that feed us. Enter The Sustainable Kitchen.

A cookbook, this collection of scrumptious recipes is interspersed with theory. Though this isn't a large volume it is amazingly comprehensive, carrying you through from appetizers to nuts with seasonal dessert recipes that range from the crunch of Sun-Dried Cherry Biscotti to the liquid -- Chilled Syrah Poached Rhubarb Soup. Recipe ingredients include fish, shellfish, poultry, beef, pork, game, eggs, cheeses, and wild mushrooms, as well as fruits and vegetables, and a section on wine selection offers a splendid short course on a complex subject.

Whether you are a vegetarian (with the enormous ecologic benefits that inhere) or an omnivore, the authors want you to consider the source and the season when you choose your diets. Local and fresh are best -- not only because local is fresher, but because dollars stay in the local economy. They explain why most fish farming is a source of environmental degradation, how to tell the difference, and which methods of catching fish are most sustainable (as well as which fish are now managed most sustainably). Distinctions in meat production are made clear as well, with specific guidelines about humane treatment, organic feedstock (and no animal byproducts or waste), no use of hormones or sub-therapeutic antibiotics and growing the animals on land that is treated as a sustainable resource.

This is one of my favorite cookbooks! It's easily laid out, I'm able to find recipes by season, and by type... I don't think I could live without it.... Some favorite's include: The ricotta gnocchi, the crab salad, white balsamic vinaigrette, chilled pea soup.... the list goes on!

I'm entirely for eating local and in-season, growing our own food, organic, etc, and we live in the same area of the restaurant, so I had high hopes. But while the recipes actually don't have too many ingredients (hard to find, yes, like duck fat or fennel bulbs, but not many of them) and seem reasonably straightforward and accessible, they aren't what I personally would cook for local and sustainable meals... these are definitely going for the gourmet high-end foodie who likes a bit of fussy in their food but wants to be greener. It's sustainable and local cooking in the hybrid-car way, rather than the bicycle way...

Stu Stein and Mary Hinds are acclaimed chefs and co-owners of The Peerless Restaurant in southern Oregon. Together with Judith H. Dern, they have collaborated in The Sustainable Kitchen: Passionate Cooking Inspired By Farms, Forests And Oceans, a compilation of fresh, seasonal, flavorful, original, and thoroughly "kitchen cook friendly" recipes. Enhanced with 75 color and b/w photos, these delicious recipes range from Asparagus Custard; Three Oyster Stew; Heirloom Tomato Salad with Grilled Red Torpedo Onions and Pesto Vinaigrette; and Slow Roasted Ivory King Salmon with a Ragout of Mushrooms, Spinach and Fingerling Potatoes; to Sage Rubbed Leg of Pork with Apple-Fennel Pan Sauce; Root Vegetable and Onion Marmalade Pave; Chocolate Peppermint Brownie; and Honey Tangerine-Meringue Tartlet with Grand Marnier Pastry Cream and Berry Coulis. The Sustainable Kitchen will prove to be a welcome and appreciated addition to any kitchen cookbook collection!