Veggie Meals: Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals [Hardcover]

Rachael Ray (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2001

This second volume in the 30-Minute Meals series offers tempting recipes for main-course veggies, veggie pastas, and salads.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 127 pages
• Publisher: Lake Isle Press; 1st edition (May 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 189110506X
• ISBN-13: 978-1891105067
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 7.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #44,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #48 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Vegetables & Vegetarian > Vegetables

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

92 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Little book, m-m-m- big reward!, January 9, 2002

By 

Max Crawford (Anchorage, Alaska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Veggie Meals: Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals (Hardcover)

Rachel Ray's book, Veggie Meals turned out to be a big find...I no longer panic when my one veggie sibling or my two veggie friends come by for lunch or dinner. They enjoyed the meals so much that a book for each was "the" Christmas present. I have also become a big fan of these recipes from the veggie snacks, Portobello parmigiano sandwich with roasted pepper salsa, YUM, to delicious full meals. Oh, did I mention the soups? THE SOUPS, YES! Little book, big reward, a great bargain. Thanks Rachel and give us More.

66 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious and Versatile, March 18, 2003

By 

"sturdyoaks" (Pensacola, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Veggie Meals: Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals (Hardcover)

This book was a gift to me~truly. You don't have to see her show to know that she has such a vibrant, earthy style~the book displays that. The recipes are so good and the simple book format is refreshing. So many cookbooks spend too much time on "pretty" pictures that they omit good recipes like those contained in this book.

Special cookbooks in my kitchen find a special place where they can be seen and are accessible. I use this book almost everyday! The pasta recipes are authentic and the sauces can be made ahead of time and then used with any of the pastas. It took me one day of making a dish from this book to put it on my favorites list~we eat it once a week or more (spinach pesto and penne pasta)! The ingredients marry together and create an incredible aroma. Even our choosy two year old loves all of her sauces and pastas.

I take special care of this book~and I take it on vacation to share the recipes with others. You will not be disappointed!

83 of 94 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Rachael Ray Material. Not greatest veggie book!, August 12, 2005

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Veggie Meals: Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals (Hardcover)

`Veggie Meals' is an early Rachael Ray book, reissued by her original publisher, Lake Isle Press, probably in light of her great recent success with her latest books and TV shows.

This is a hard book to recommend, in spite of the fact that I am a major fan of Ms. Ray's cooking show and the value I find in her '30 Minute Meal' books for people who would like to cook, but who have little time to search through the `Joy of Cooking' or similar encyclopedia for quick cooking meals, especially when they don't know the background behind fast versus slow cooking techniques.

One thing to consider is that while Ms. Ray does give menus of three dishes at the beginning of the book, it is not her classic `three dishes together' recipe presentation where all three recipes are done in the way she does it on her `Thirty Minute Meals' show.

The issue is probably a lot easier if you happen to already be a big Rachael Ray book fan and have many of her other, later books, and, you do not have a lot of cookbooks from other authors. This means that you can get these 95 vegetable recipes for a list price of $14.95 and have little fear of overlapping other books. This price of 15 cents per recipe is good, but not great as celebrity recipes go, but then, these are not really `celebrity' recipes in the same sense as those from Thomas Keller or Rick Tramonto or Eric Rippert. We are buying this book for versions of classic recipes that can be done quickly. And, I believe you should only get this book if:

1. You are primarily interested in fast recipes.
2. You really like Ms. Ray's twist on recipes and writing recipes.
3. You do not have other good books on vegetarian recipes.

This last condition is important because there are a whole lot of very good books of vegetarian and vegetable based recipes available from some pretty famous names in the culinary world. The three leading names are Deborah Madison, Jack Bishop, and Peter Berley. If you are really interested in vegetarian cooking and speed is not your major concern, and then you must get Madison's `Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone'. This big book is comparable in scope and quality to Julia Child's classic `Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. Another excellent Madison book is `Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison's Kitchen'. Equally authoritative is Jack Bishop's `A Year in the Vegetarian Kitchen' or his book on Italian vegetarian dishes. Berley has done two very good vegetarian books, the second being `Fresh Food Fast' which presents fast vegetarian cooking in far more depth than does Ms. Ray.

The moral of this paragraph is that Ms. Ray is treading in a field that already has its share of major league experts.

The recommendation on fast recipes is important because while there are a lot of `classic' recipes in this book, they may not yield `classic' results because of the shortcuts taken to speed up preparation time. The other side of the coin is that this book reassures us that, in a pinch, we can in fact make risotto, pasta Primavera, ratatouille, and eggplant Parmigiano in less than a full afternoon.

So, I suggest that you give just a little thought to parting with your 15 bucks for this book, but that you will probably not be disappointed if you are in Ms. Ray's favored audience.