NancyM's Reviews
Cookbook Reviews
A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen: Easy Seasonal Dishes for Family and Friends
By Jack Bishop
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - 2004
This is one of my favorite cookbooks and I've considered it as a candidate to cook all the recipes from over the course of a year. Every time I pick it up I'm inspired to do something creative in the kitchen.
The book is arranged with the recipes listed by the four seasons and each section lists the recipes at the beginning. I find this organization very helpful as I, along with the author, receive a weekly share of vegetables from a Community Sponsored Agriculture farm in town. Since he lives on Long Island, and I'm in upstate New York, the vegetables he has available are quite similar to those I receive each week. But even if you don't belong to a farm program, the recipes focus on vegetables that are likely to be in your local farmer's market or supermarket each season.
The only downside to this organization is when you either choose to eat something out of season, or the recipe you want is in a section you might not look in, especially if your seasons differ from those in the book. California or Florida come to mind. But there is a great feature in the back of the book that helps to mitigate this. An index of recipes by category is given. This is useful for anyone, as it lists recipes by type, such as Pasta and Noodles; Eggs; Sandwiches and Tortilla Dishes; Side Dishes; Pizzas and Tarts; etc.
The recipes included can all be made in less than an hour, some in much less time, and had to be tasty and use fresh ingredients to be included.
Jack Bishop is the Executive Editor of Cook's Illustrated magazine, so he knows all about writing clear instructions in recipes and he demonstrates that in this book. The instructions are detailed and don't leave any doubt about what to do.
Reading this book is a joy too as each recipe has a nice headnote describing what the recipe will create as well as bit of information on some of the ingredients. To further instruct, almost every recipe has a sidebar describing a particular ingredient or technique.
The recipes take inspiration from cuisines all over the world, yet use vegetables and other ingredients that aren't impossible to find. Recreating the authentic dishes of other cultures isn't the goal here, but to use those ingredients or techniques from other parts of the world to enhance the ingredients at hand.
Most recipes serve 4, with some for 2 or 3. Many could easily incorporate meat if desired or be served on the side for meat eaters and alone for the vegetarians in the family.