Vegetables Every Day: The Definitive Guide to Buying and Cooking Today's Produce With over 350 Recipes (Hardcover)

by Jack Bishop (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
If you find yourself in daily dread of how to fix those vegetables that Mom always told you to eat, your lifeline is here. Unique and tempting recipes are abundant in Jack Bishop's Vegetables Every Day. Throughout the book's 66 chapters--one for each vegetable he includes in the book--Bishop features the retail availability of the specific veggie, the best season to find the most flavorful choice, and which characteristics to look for in a good specimen. He also includes recommendations for best preparation and which spices and herbs will best support and enhance the flavor of the vegetable of choice.

The recipes range from the basic to the complex, from simple steamed broccoli to rich soups such as Corn Chowder with Leeks and Potatoes. Even traditional recipes get an update, such as sautéed mushrooms cooked with butter, onions, and garlic. In just two simple steps, Bishop's interpretation has the mushrooms taking on an exquisite flavor that can stand alone as a side dish or as a topping for a rich steak. There may be some vegetables that are much less well known and even more difficult to find at the corner grocery store, such as malanga, Jerusalem artichokes, or salsify, but if you're interested, his suggestions might just help you find and tastefully enjoy them. Vegetables Every Day is the solution to satisfying the recommended five servings of vegetables a day. --Teresa Simanton

From Publishers Weekly
This new cookbook by the author of Pasta e Verdura is for cooks who want to broaden their repertoire of side dishes and capitalize on the abundant produce now available in grocery stores. Not sure how to cook fresh beets? Want your family to try mashed malanga instead of potatoes? Bishop gives helpful instructions on selection, seasonality, cleaning and simple preparation techniques (especially grilling, braising and stir-frying). Readers should know that this is not a vegetarian cookbook offering a breadth of entr‚es (in fact, beans, except for fava beans, aren't even included), but rather an unadorned volume that offers an exciting twist on foods we know are good for us but often ignore. Simplicity and ease are the hallmarks of this cookbook; however, there are a few idiosyncrasies for the reader to adapt to: the table of contents is alphabetized, but the system is sometimes counterintuitive (squashes are categorized by season--"Winter Squash and Pumpkin" and "Zucchini and Other Summer Squash"--but that's a minor quibble). Many of the salad recipes, such as Moroccan Fennel and Grapefruit Salad with Olives, are inspired, and many ethnic cuisines are represented, though, unfortunately, none in great depth. Cooks who love to read cookbooks will find the streamlined text lacking in historical anecdotes and nutritional information, which would certainly add to the book's health-conscious appeal. Agent, Angela Miller. (Apr.)Forecast: While useful as a guide to selection and basic preparation, this book won't appeal to the many cooks who, pressed for time, look for more comprehensive volumes. However, this title is a natural sell to vegetarians, and enough of them may be interested to produce healthy sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks; 1 edition (April 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060192216
• ISBN-13: 978-0060192211
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #16,336 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rediscovering vegetables (for the first time), June 6, 2001

By	Rick Broida (Commerce Township, MI USA) - See all my reviews

After hearing an interview with Jack Bishop on NPR, my wife and I were intrigued enough to order the book. Four of the five recipes we've tried thus far have been outstanding, to the point where we're building entire meals based on them. For instance, we both like broccoli, but didn't know the best way to cook it. Now we do. I've never liked green beans, but we tried Bishop's recipe for roasting them, and I'm suddenly hooked! In short, if you've been wanting to bring more vegetables into your diet, buy this book!

42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great information, May 14, 2001

By A Customer

The book is not just a simple compilation of recipes, but also includes information on how to buy and store each vegetable. The book also discusses the various cooking methods (poaching, steaming, braising, grilling, broiling, etc.) and how they affect the flavor.

Even if you don't use a single recipe in this book, you will still benefit from the basic preparation instructions given for each vegetable.

This book will also give you the information you need to try out the produce that you've previously bypassed in the store because you had no idea how to pick it out or prepare it.

44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Reference for Vegetarians and Everyday Cooks, November 8, 2004

By	B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

`Vegetables Every Day' is by Jack Bishop, a very intelligent craftsman of cookbooks similar to James Peterson, Molly Katzen, Rose Levy Beranbaum, and Pam Anderson. Each is skillful at creating very useful reference books on various aspects of cooking. And, it should be no surprise that both Bishop and Pam Anderson are current or past senior staffers at `Cooks Illustrated' magazine.

It is a great treat to have two of these skillful authors both do excellent books on vegetables, and to have the two books done from two so different points of view that one will feel no pangs of waste by owning both. Bishop's book is certainly the more accessible of the two, as the material is presented in a very straightforwardly encyclopedic presentation. There are uniform articles on 66 different vegetables, a veritable celebration of the variety of vegetables available through part or all of the year round. Among these 66, there are the old favorites such as broccoli, carrots, celery, mushrooms, potatoes, tomatoes, and onions. Alongside these there are new favorites brought to our attention by hours of watching Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, and Jaime Oliver such as Artichokes, Broccoli Rabe, Cardoons, Celery Root, Dandelion Greens, Fava Beans, Fennel, Soybeans, Turnips, and Zucchini. At the far end of familiarity are Boniato, Burdock, Calabaza, Chayote, Jerusalem Artichokes, Kohlrabi, Malanga, Sorrel, Taro, and Yuca. These are the veggies which should be approached with one of my favorite Alton Brown `Good Eats' moments when he recommends that you walk into your megamart with fresh eyes on the lookout for unfamiliar products and investigate what can be done with these little gems.

Bishop is not only intent on providing things to do with newly available produce, he is intent on making cooking all vegetables, especially the old standards with a new set of recipes to make them more interesting and to make cooking them more fun. One excellent case in point is asparagus that everyone either boils or steams and dresses with some creamy sauce. Since everyone already knows how to do this, Bishop doesn't bother to give recipes for these. Rather, his nine asparagus recipes include three roasting methods, a grilling recipe, two sautee recipes, a recipe with Chinese noodles, a recipe with a vinaigrette, and an asparagus frittata.

Every article, regardless of how many recipes may be given, has the same seven (7) paragraphs in the introductory article. The first paragraph simply introduces you to the vegetable and gives you a general idea of the appeal and usability of the vegetable. The next paragraph on availability gives the best season for the produce and whether or not the vegetable is currently available year round in American markets. The third paragraph on selection gives us criteria for whether we want to pick up today's selection of a species or let it alone. The paragraph on storage is especially useful, as there is probably very little wisdom handed down from your Eastern European grandma on storing tomatillos, taro, or jicama or from your Mexican mom on dealing with arugula, bok choy, or burdock. The basic preparation paragraph can be simple for leafy greens or very complicated for artichokes. The very short section on best cooking methods is primarily useful for totally unfamiliar vegetables. A very useful last entry gives recipes on other vegetables in which the titular ingredient appears.

One may not think there is anything controversial about vegetables, but you may be surprised, especially if you read Bishop's and Peterson's books side by side. On the matter of asparagus, Bishop prefers thin to medium thickness stalks and prefers not to peel them. Peterson prefers medium to thick stalks and strongly recommends peeling the stalks. To a certain extent, this is a matter of personal preference, but much of this difference comes from the fact that Peterson is a former restaurant chef / owner while there is no record in Bishop's biographical information that he ever worked in a restaurant kitchen. If time is less important than money, then Peterson's position is definitely the better. If time is at a premium, Bishop's position may be preferable. On almost all other issues, the two authors agree.

One corollary of Bishop's objective in preparing this book is that this is not a reference for the most commonly prepared recipes. But, this is not universally true. While the traditional steaming or poaching methods for asparagus is absent, classic mashed potatoes and the traditional Greek salad with tomatoes are here. Bishop is certainly on the side of the gourmet when it comes to discussing tomatoes. He is in love with fresh homegrown tomatoes in July and August, but recommends canned `maters all other times of the year.

One of the most enjoyable discoveries in Bishop's book is to find ways to treat certain vegetables in totally unexpected ways. Two cases are shallots and garlic. Both are most commonly thought of as herbs to enliven dishes where some other vegetable or protein is the main ingredient, but if you are willing to pay the price, shallots make a great main ingredient, not really much different in cost from, for example cippolini or wild mushrooms.

In choosing between Bishop and Peterson, I find that Bishop is much better for the average cook who does not spend a lot of time reading cookbooks. The organization is much better for finding a good recipe for the veg that happened to be on special today. Peterson's book is much more oriented toward the foodie and the professional. It is organized more by method than by ingredient and it is much better at presenting instructions on difficult techniques such as cleaning an artichoke. Peterson has the one thing I miss the most in Bishop's book, which are good pictures of vegetables. Neither comes with the lyrics of Frank Zappa's `Ask Any Vegetable'.

Very highly recommended as a vegetarian and general cook's reference for recipes and buying advice.