The Millennium Cookbook: Extraordinary Vegetarian Cuisine [Paperback]

Eric Tucker (Author), John Westerdahl (Author), Sascha Weiss (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 1, 1998

San Francisco'¬?s Millennium restaurant is renowned for its elegant, intriguing, and delicious vegetarian fare. Very low-fat, this sophisticated and inviting food draws from a world of culinary influences. With full-color photographs, an ingredient glossary, and an introduction to the techniques of dairy- and egg-free cooking.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Millennium, arguably the best vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco, finally shares its secrets. If you've never been to Millennium, forget the stereotype of a vegetarian restaurant serving bean sprouts, brown rice, and seaweed. Millennium, a true gourmet restaurant, presents elegant, innovative, inspired cuisine that happens to be as healthy as it is delicious. This book entices the accomplished cook to explore exquisite dishes that will surprise and delight any dinner party--even if your guests are not vegetarians. Try appetizers like Cabbage and Shiitake-Filled Spring Rolls with Plum Sauce, or Grilled Portobellos with Herb-Tofu Aioli and Red Onion Marmalade. Experience the Indian-inspired Baked Madras-Glazed Tofu with Saffron Basmati Pilaf and Peach-Lime Chutney, or the Curry-Crusted Tempeh with Pomegranate Sauce. You won't want to skip dessert: Chocolate-Almond Midnight will indulge even the most finicky chocoholic.

Some of the dishes are simple to prepare, but most are intricate and time consuming and include subrecipes, making this book best for artistic cooks who revel in new, inventive recipes. For example, the recipe for luscious Moroccan Filo Crescents with Curried Golden Tomato Sauce (only 21 percent fat, despite the filo) takes more than a page, and references three other recipes. All recipes are vegan--no meat, eggs, or dairy--and most are very low in fat. Nutritional breakdown is provided for each recipe, and the food photos are gorgeous. The Millennium Cookbook is an impeccable gift for the inspired cook in your life. --Joan Price

From Booklist

No, this isn't a cookbook for those expecting the imminent end of the world. Its name comes from San Francisco's popular vegan restaurant, Millennium. As more people follow vegetarian regimes for the health benefits of low-fat cooking, an upscale restaurant catering to their needs is a welcome phenomenon. Millennium takes food very seriously, and it raises vegan cuisine to new levels. Although tempeh substitutes for meat in a number of recipes, there's a welcome absence of vegetarian chilis and lasagnas. Instead, chefs make use of both ordinary and uncommon grains and flavor them with lots of lively seasonings, such as chipotle peppers. In conformance with vegan rules, dairy products are taboo, so the dessert recipes make use of milk substitutes. Serious vegetarians looking for diet variety will eagerly welcome the new horizons this cookbook opens, but reproducing these vegan recipes successfully at home demands no little kitchen savvy. Mark Knoblauch --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press; 1 edition (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898158990
• ISBN-13: 978-0898158991
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 0.8 x 10.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #77,458 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 72 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A milestone in vegan cuisine August 3, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Overall, this is one of the best cookbooks I own, and I make that claim as a former meat-eater and a recent most-of-the-time vegan. I have been using "The Millennium Cookbook" since February and have made roughly half of the recipes in the book, including nearly all of those for pasta and pizza. I use this book all the time. My husband--a sometimes meat-eater with an open mind and palate--says nearly always that our Millennium meals are "exquisite." I certainly concur. Here are some stand-outs, in our view:

Appetizers: Roasted Tomato and White Bean Galettes; Plantain Torte; Grilled Portobellos with Herb-Tofu Aioli and Red Onion Marmalade

Salads: Oil-Free Caesar Dressing; Millennium Warm Spinach Salad; Curried Almond Dressing; Ruby Grapefruit, Avocado, and Pickled Red Onions with Baby Spinach and Grapefruit Mojo Dressing; Moroccan Eggplant Salad

Soups: Yellow Split Pea Soup with Sage and Smoked Dulse Gremolata; Brazilian Black Bean Soup with Coffee and Orange

Pasta and Pizza: Pasta with White Wine-Marinated Tomatoes and Basil; Mushroom, Fennel, and Dill Cream Penne; Marinated Fig, Onion, and Black Olive Pizzas with Herb-Tofu Aioli; Caramelized Garlic and Smoked Portobello Pizzas; Tempeh Pizzas with Puttanesca Sauce

Sides: Millennium Fat-Free Mashed Potatoes

Entrees: Baked Madras-Glazed Tofu with Saffron Basmati Pilaf, Sauteed Vegetables, and Peach-Lime Chutney; Rosa Bianca Eggplant Torte with Smoked Onion Ratatouille and Flageolet-Sage Sauce; Seitan Piccata; Grilled Jerked Seitan with Coconut Mashed Yams; Spring Onion, Morel, Fresh Pea, and Lemon Thyme Risotto

Brunch: Smoked Tempeh and Potato Sausages; Flaxseed-Apple-Battered French Toast with Warm Apple Compote; Millennium Oat and Walnut Pancakes with Blueberry-Orange Sauce

Desserts: Mocha Mud Slide; Mad Good Chocolate Cake; Pine Nut and Anise Cake; Brownies a la Mode; Chocolate-Almond Midnight; Meyer Lemon Bundt Cakes with Blackberry Sorbet and Meyer Lemon Sauce; Fig and Almond Tart with Red Wine and Pear Cream

The desserts are "to die for," especially the fat-free version of their brownies. Overall, the meals are delicious, filling, and very satisfying. We don't hesitate to accompany them with a good bottle of wine.

Another plus is that with time, you get a feel for using fat substitutes (e.g., braised garlic, stewed prunes, and the amazing silken tofu) and can soon come up with your own novel creations.

Readers should be aware that this book does have its drawbacks. While many of the recipes can be made easily and quickly (pasta and pizza, mostly), many others require considerable time and effort. Close inspection reveals that there are a certain number of errors (sometimes of omission, e.g., saffron-cream sauce that leaves out the saffron ..., or even lack of directions). It should be noted that these can be attributed ultimately to the editors and not to the authors. I'm sure the second edition will clear these up. I've also found that many of the recipes work better with a little less liquid than called for (I don't know if this is a question of personal preference, altitude, or something else). For the above reasons, the "Millennium" is not for beginning cooks, in my view. But if you know how to cook, want to be a vegan, and are tired of searching "Gourmet" for the odd recipe that doesn't contain animal ingredients, this book is for you as much as it is for me--an inveterate "food snob" of the first order.

Given rising rates of population and chronic disease, along with diminishing resources, vegan cooking is inevitably the culinary wave of the future. Compared to the other vegan cookbooks out there (even "The Vegan Gourmet"), the "Millennium" is the best. It's certainly worthwhile to join its celebration of great plant-based food. This is the best investment I've made in a cookbook in many years.

80 of 85 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious Gourmet Vegan fare but not for the average cook April 5, 2000

By C. Rigby

Format:Paperback

The layout of the book was lovely and crisp -- nice photos,roomy margins for notes.

The recipes are delicious and since there are few fancy vegan cookbook collections out there, vegans will LOVE it! For entertaining or more elaborate menus it's a real treat!

For the average cook or the average palate -- it's going to be hit or miss. I would not suggest this book to a new vegetarian or a non-vegetarian trying to incoporate a few vegetarian meals a week into their diet. For them I'd point to 1,001 Low-Fat Vegetarian Recipes by Sue Spitler or The McDougall Quick & Easy Cookbook by Mary McDougall, John A., M.D. McDougall

Most of the recipes in Millenium rely heavily on fresh, quality ingredients and herbs and spices that will be difficult to find in a "regular" grocery. If they are there, they might not be fresh, because they don't sell as often in a regular store and this will affect the resulting dish. Ingredients that sit on the shelf gathering dust and losing flavor, particularly herbs and spices that these recipes rely on, are NOT going to yield tasty results.

While vegans/vegetarians with experience shopping at other places will have no problem, the average person will be a little puzzled as to where to find shiitake, miso, tofu, anise, fennel, nutritional yeast, Rice Dream, etc.

The busy person will also not have time to deal with making these recipes -- they require more effort, skill, time. Those with more experience will find the recipes easy to follow, those who work primarly from cans, pre-made mixes, and 5 or less ingredients might find the recipes daunting and they might find cooking gourmet fare from scratch a challenge.

While the rewards are delicious, this isn't the cookbook I'd head to on a tiring Monday night after work!

The recipes are also generous with 6-8 servings -- in my 2 person family, it's too much food for us. You can expect to have to adjust the numbers if you are a small family.

Overall I think it was a wonderful book, and a welcome addition to my collection. I'd still put it towards the "advanced" end of the spectrum though.

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Gourmet Cuisine August 1, 2001

By disco75

Format:Paperback

Vegan or carnivore, people are impressed with and love food prepared from these recipes. Sophisticated and complex, the dishes cover the globe in style. When I first bought this book I became frustrated, being unused to saucing my dishes and not having both blender and food processor. The time consuming procedures and multiplicity of steps were daunting and it sat on my shelf for a year. I went back to it when I started entertaining and, renovation of my kitchen complete, found that I could indeed handle the recipes. Some of the dishes are out of my range either because I don't have the means for smoking food or because in my rural Mid-Atlantic community there is not a farmer's market with the types of produce that San Francisco enjoys. I am, however, all about the culinary philosophy that undergirds this book, and many of the recipes have been fantastic. It is apparent that it was written in a restaurant kitchen but nevertheless it makes for superb holiday or entertaining meals. Big hits have been the Latin-style Torte with Plantains and Tofu, the Filo-Wrapped Spring Rolls, the Hot and Sour Soup (which is Vietnamese in style), and the Pureed Root Vegetables.