Great Purchase
First, I must admit, the book is a bit overwhelming with the amount of pages it holds (it's pretty thick). But at the same time, that does mean you are getting so many recipes! It's terrific, such a variety of foods. What I like is it is both for vegetarians and vegans (if a recipe calls for the use of milk or cheese, he gives you alternates right there for vegan use, though a good amount of the book also holds vegan recipes). I'm a college student and was looking for a great variety book to get me through my years. With so many options out there it was hard, but I am really happy I went with this cookbook. For first time vegetarians it's great because it gives you plenty of pages in the beginning of the book listing the top 20 food items you ... Read More
Adding to the applause...
I'll just add to the raves of other readers who found How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food to be a wonderful addition to their cookbooks. I must have over 150 cookbooks, and this was on my shelf for quite some time before I picked it up recently. I was amazed at the recipes, and I will turn to How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food more and more in the future. I'm trying to incorporate more vegetarian meals into my diet, but beyond that, I just find How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food to be quite useful in all aspects of my menu planning. I will now reconsider other books by Mark Bitman.
Recipes that even my non-vegetarian husband loves
A co-worker of mine brought this cookbook to work and said "here, take this home and look it over." I thanked him politely, but inside was feeling imposed upon. Sure I'm a vegetarian, but does this mean I have to take home YOUR gigantic cookbook and look at it? I ended up taking it and also cooking from it. The things I discovered were that Mark Bittman is talented and knows how to create food that tastes really good. Dependably good. The recipes are not complicated, and sometimes very easy yet produce delicious and interesting vegetarian food. How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food engaged me in a way no other cook book has. There is something thrilling to me about making a exotic sounding Senegalese Peanut Soup full of rich flavors including chard and having my 16 year ... Read More
Excellent for vegetarians and everyone else
I'm not 100% vegetarian, but I love many vegetarian foods and dishes, and was really looking forward to How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food. I haven't actually made any of the recipes yet. Those two caveats aside, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food is fantastic. It's absolutely comprehensive, and I would imagine extremely useful for vegans or someone like me who still eats meat but enjoys meatless foods (and everyone in between). Mr. Bittman has a great way of explaining things as if assuming the reader really doesn't know anything, without dumbing it down or writing as if he's talking to a child. I have loved "How To Cook Everything" for a few years, and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food has a similar style of recipes. Very simple, with the emphasis on using the best quality of ingredients (or, making the best ... Read More
Essential
This is hands-down the best cookbook I've ever bought, for several reasons. First, at a whopping 900 pages it is far more comprehensive than competitors such as Laurel's Kitchen and the various Moosewood Cookbooks. For example, when I brought home fresh chestnuts from the store and needed ideas on how to cook them, I was impressed to find a good half-dozen uses for them in the cookbook, from basic roasted chestnuts to bean and chestnut soup to chestnut ice cream. I rarely come up empty-handed when I go looking for a recipe in this tome. Second, the straightforward recipes eschew fancy techniques when they are superfluous and thus can actually be made by everyday cooks in a reasonable amount of time. This sets it apart from Deborah Madison's ... Read More
