[.ca] Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini: The Essential ... (ISBN 0688152600)

From Amazon.com:
Elizabeth Schneider's Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables set a standard for exact yet lively investigation. Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini follows in her earlier book's footsteps to create a compelling guide to 350 common and exotic vegetables. This seed-to-table exploration does more, however. In addition to its usefulness as a reference work (vegetables are, for example, listed by their market, botanical, and common names), the book offers 500 up-to-the-minute recipes--such as Shredded Yellow Squash with Garlic Chives and Baked Sweet Potato-Apple Puree with Horseradish--valuable advice on seasonality and selection, multiple-method cooking instructions, and color photos of all the entries that make market identification a breeze. Interested in amaranth? Find its entry and discover, first, the magenta-veined plant's common aliases (among them, the Caribbean callaloo, the Indian bhaji, and the Korean namul); an engaging vegetable biography that distills information from many fields (for example, the Greeks thought amaranth immortal); information on selection, storage, and preparation (use the vegetable's tiniest leaves for salads; steam, braise, or sauté the larger "with garlic, shallots, tomato dice, and a touch of chilies"); and full-dress recipes (such as Garlicky Sauté of Amaranth and Tomatoes, Cuban Style). A final section, called Pros Propose, offers recipe sketches from cooking experts, like Paula Wolfert's Amaranth and Sheep's Milk Cheese. This lucid organizational scheme, common to all the entries, and Schneider's expert handling of it, promote a full yet relaxed familiarization with the selected vegetables. This is one of those few books that most cooks will want, as well as need, to own. --Arthur Boehm

Worth every penny:
The idea of buying a $60 cookbook (however much discounted) makes me gasp. At that price, it had better be awesome. Fortunately, Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini delivers... and then some. If you're interested in non-mundane foods, particularly "ethnic" foods, then you've probably had the same experience I have. You find an odd looking vegetable in the grocery store, and are intruigued. You pick it up, and contemplate bringing it home. And then you realize that you have absolutely *no* idea what you'd do with one of these (other than think, "I'm sure I read about bitter melons or chayote *some*place). So you sadly put the veggie back on the shelf, feeling as though you've missed out. VfAtZ is a perfect answer to this dilemma. In this fat book (you could squash a *huge* spider with this tome), the author goes through all the "interesting" veggies with a predictable and welcome formula. There's a clear photo of the item, usually with some indication of size and with a "cutaway" so you know what the thing looks like once you chop it open. The author explains what the vegetable is (genus and all that jazz); where it came from (i.e. originally from South America, but now most popular in Asia); the varieties you can expect to find and the differences between them. I very much appreciate her clear instructions about choosing the vegetable in the market (i.e. heavy for its size, and no black marks on it), and the "basic" method of cooking (boiling, steaming, etc.) There's always at least a few recipes that highlight the essential tomatillo-ness or chayote-hood or whatever, plus a "Pros Propose" section where she gives you recipes from chefs and other cookbooks. (The latter are intentionally vague -- "he grills tomatillos with garlic and onlon" without indication of quantities -- presumably for copyright reasons. You get the idea anyway.) In short, after reading one of her 3-4 page entries for each vegetable (they're much longer for some items, such as the range of squash and mushrooms), you can confidently stand in the grocery store looking at the aforementioned veggie and Know What To Do With It. Other reviewers criticize the book for not including EVERY vegetable (I admit I'd like more, but only because I'd enjoy anything this author wrote), and that the recipes aren't all that great. They're generally okay, but I admit that few of them are awesome. But I see the recipes as an exercise in learning about the vegetable rather than a source of "what to have for dinner." I often reach for this book because some other cookbook was too vague. Case in point: a recipe in another cookbook for a Sichuan hotpot suggested you could cook sliced lotus root in the hotpot. I dutifully picked up a lotus root at the Asian market. When I got it home, I had no idea how one slices it -- do I peel it first? What about these knobby chunks? I grabbed Schneider's book off the shelf, and five minutes later I knew just what to do. (It tasted darned good, too.) I don't grab for this book when I'm trying to figure out what to make for dinner. But I'm glad I have this book when I want a definitive answer about using a vegetable, or learning how to cook it.

Immediate thumbs up!:
I just received this book for Christmas after wanting it since it was first released. It immediately satisfied my questions about the bok choy family (try and figure out the difference between yu choy and choy sum if you're not an expert in Asian produce). I also made a recipe for broccoli raab (one of the four names she mentions) and found it very quick, easy, and relatively low fat. I admit, I haven't used it day-in and day-out like some of the reviewers, but upon immediate perusal it has clear pictures and descriptions and recipes that utilize the main ingredient in its 'natural habitat' i.e. Cuban vegies have Cuban recipes, etc. I'm saving the fifth star only because I am still working through the book.

Great, but why not complete?:
Just swell, but why leave out the basics? Regular vegetables deserve the same deluxe treatment! It wouldn't have been much more work and it's not clear from the title (I'd say zucchini are prettyu common)that only selected vegetables are represented. Other than that, it's great. And well worth the high price.

Good for satisfying curiousity, but recipes are lacking:
I worked in the produce department of an upscale supermarket for several years, so I feel like I know a few things about fruits and vegetables. However, this book has more information about exotic (and some not-so-exotic) vegetables than I could have imagined. The descriptions, the histories, and the photos of veggies are all outstanding. Elizabeth Schneider writes with a lot of enthusiasm, and after reading for only a short time, you will want to go out, buy the vegetables, and start cooking and eating! The problem is that the recipes included in the book dont always match the quality of the descriptions. I've tested a handful of them, all for different vegetables, and the final dishes just didnt turn out well. They were all okay, but a couple just seemed, well, bland, and a couple others tended to be dominated by one seasoning (white pepper, for example.) Not that this was a huge problem, and you could easily tweak the recipes yourself, but I guess the quality of the rest of the book led me to expect more. And since about half of the book IS recipes, it was a little disappointing. Since the vegetables are uncommon, they often arent included in other cookbooks. Overall, though, I liked the book, and one of the best things I've found is that it's made me more likely to experiment with the vegetables, outside the context of a prepared recipie, since Schneider gives general preparation and storage tips for all her entries. Her other book, which deals with both fruits and vegetables, is older and consequently has some entries that deal with more common produce. I'd recommend that book too, if you're looking for something geared towards guiding you through the supermarket.

Encyclopedic:
My wife and I joined a community supported agriculture (CSA) this summer. Each Monday for 20 weeks we receive a "mystery box" filled with the vegetables grown by a collective of local organic farms. Some of the vegetables, such as garlic scape and radish greens, aren't used in any of our everyday cookbooks. Fortunately, we heard about this book. And so far we've been very pleased. We've learned a ton about the "mystery" vegetables we've received since and even learned some good recipes for them. Buy it for the beautiful descriptions and photos of vegetables and their varieties; the storage, preparation, and recipe suggestions are the clincher.