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| Chez Panisse Vegetables Notecards | 
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| Author: Chronicle Books Llc Staff
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $12.04
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Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 712949
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Cards
Edition: Notecards
Number Of Items: 12
Pages: 12
ASIN: B000IOEUN6
Publication Date: February 28, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
By now just about everybody whose interest in eating runs deeper than fast food knows about Alice Waters. The creator of Chez Panisse, the legendary restaurant in Berkeley, California, that helped create a modern American cuisine based on fresh ingredients, she is also equally well-known as a teacher and cookbook author. Chez Panisse Vegetables is one of the best new cookbooks of the season; it's as useful for its information about vegetables and how to use and handle them as it is for its irresistible recipes, which lead to complex and interesting dishes built from simple ingredients and simple techniques.
Product Description
For twenty-five years, Alice Waters and her friends at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California have dedicated themselves to the ideal of serving the finest, freshest foods with simplicity and style. From tender baby asparagus in early spring, to the colorful spectrum of peppers at the height of summer; crisp, leafy chicories in autumn, to sweet butternut squash in the dark of winter, much of the inspiration about what to put on the menu comes from the high quality produce Waters and her chefs seek out year-round. Using the treasures from the earth, Chez Panisse Vegetables offers endless possibilities for any occasion. Try Grilled Radicchio Risotto with Balsamic Vinegar at your next dinner party, or Pizza with Red and Yellow Peppers for a summer evening at home. Why not forgo green-leaf lettuce, and opt for Artichoke and Grapefruit Salad drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil? Or serve Corn Cakes with fresh berries for breakfast instead of cereal? Throughout Vegetables, Waters shares her energy and enthusiasm for what she describes as "living foods." When she first began in the restaurant business, the selection of good-quality vegetables was so limited that she found herself searching out farmers with whom she might do business. Luckily, today's explosion of markets and organic farms across the country ensures that any home cook can find freshly harvested produce to put on the table. And with the increased popularity of home gardening, more and more people are taking their vegetables straight from the earth and into the kitchen. Cooks, gardeners, vegetarians and everyone who appreciates good food will find Chez Panisse Vegetables to be not only a cookbook, but a valuable resource for selecting and serving fine produce. From popular vegetables like corn, tomatoes and carrots, to more unusual selections like chard, amaranth greens and sorrel, Vegetables offers detailed information about the seasonal availability, proper look, flavor and preparation of each selection. Arranged alphabetically by vegetable, and filled with colorful linocut images, Chez Panisse Vegetables makes it easy for a cook to find a tempting recipe for whatever he or she has brought home from the market.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 A keeper for your cookbook shelf if you are NOT vegetarian February 8, 2003
71 out of 73 found this review helpful
This book is a comprehensive resource that tells you how to select, store, and prep your vegetables. So just to demystify your farmers market, this book is an essential. However, in terms of recipes, it does fall short, treating vegetables only as soups or sides for the most part. Also if you *are* vegetarian, many recipes call for anchovies, bacon, chicken stock etc. If I had to pick between this and Deborah Madison's "Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets" I would pick the latter since that offers more main dish recipes, and covers all farm market produce, fruits, vegetables, and non-vegetarian stuff too, while keeping recipes involving vegetables vegetarian. And Deborah Madison also instructs you on how to prepare more exotic veg.
Despite the cons it is a fascinating read, and its nice that it does not assume you are already a "cook"
Excellent Source for Vegetable Dishes, But Not the Best. January 1, 2005
55 out of 77 found this review helpful
`Chez Panisse Vegetables' by Alice Waters is a book you will want to seriously consider for your library in general, and especially if you are very fond of cooking vegetable dishes. This is not to say this is the best book on the veggie bookshelf, as there are several, both vegetarian and non that are as good or better. The most similar volume is `Vegetables Every Day' by Jack Bishop which, like Waters' volume is organized by vegetable. And, in most easily measurable regards, Bishop's book is superior if you simply cannot have more than one veggie book on your shelves.
For starters, Bishop's book weights in at 388 pages for a list price of $30 while Ms. Waters has 336 pages for a list price of $35. Bishop covers 68 named vegetables in his table of contents while Waters covers only 44; however, some of her 44 chapters cover two similar veggies, as in the chapter on broccoli and broccoli raab. Yet, while Waters gives us five recipes on these two products, Bishop gives us eleven (11) recipes on broccoli and four recipes for broccoli raab.
Bishop also gives a lot more routine information on each vegetable. 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.
But then, this review is about Waters' book, so let's get back to it. From the point of view of a book lover, there are a few things that recommend this book. First, like all of the Chez Panisse cookbooks, this one is very attractively illustrated in a vaguely French Art Nouveau style with what appear to be color pencil drawings for each vegetable. The table of contents also has the complete title of every recipe in the front of the book, which is a great help if you happen to be doing a quick search for a particular carrot or sweet potato recipe. Ms. Waters' volume also includes recipes for some vegetables not covered in Mr. Bishop's book such as Amaranth Greens, but Mr. Bishop returns the favor by covering several not highlighted by Ms. Waters.
Even though Ms. Waters dedicates more pages to mushrooms than does Mr. Bishop, Bishop offers fourteen (14) mushroom recipes to Ms. Waters twelve (12). And, Mr. Bishop tends to give more basic and more traditional recipes. Among his mushroom recipes, for example, he has a recipe for duxelles and for duxelles with scrambled eggs. Bishop also includes more recipes that include meat; but neither book should be considered a vegan or vegetarian book, as both make heavy use of dairy products in their recipes.
The two most positive things I can say about Ms. Waters book are that there is very little overlap of recipes between her book and Mr. Bishop's book and her comments are much more fun to read between commercials while watching Rachael Ray or Alton Brown on the Food Network. The introductory text is less formal, but more interesting.
While I have had Ms. Waters' book longer than I have had Mr. Bishop's volume, I still go to Chez Panisse first over all my other vegetable books, as Waters' recipes are simple, elegant, and very well explained. I go to Bishop second if I can't find anything that appeals to me from Miss Alice.
If you can, get both of these books over any other vegetable cookbook I have seen (although I have certainly not seen all). But do not get them if you need strictly vegetarian recipes. For those, see Deborah Madison's books, `The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen' by Peter Berley, or Crescent Dragonwagon's encyclopedic `Passionate Vegetarian'.
Highly recommended for foodies and cookbook collectors.
 Wonderfully comprehensive tome on vegetables October 19, 1999
32 out of 37 found this review helpful
Although this book is filled with wonderful information on vegetables and their proper preparation, has there ever been a book with a lower recipe-to-text ratio? Even if you enjoy Alice Waters' predictable discussions of eating what's locally available (has she ever had anything else to say?), you might want more actual recipes before plunking down the price of this tome.
 farmers market confidence! October 27, 2001
25 out of 25 found this review helpful
Do you find yourself gazing at kale while filling your basket with broccoli and carrots? Then this is the book for you! Be bold in a farmers market, buy the kale or any other unfamiliar vegetable and cook it with confidence! This book tells you all about a vegetable, when it is in season, what to do with it in general and in various stages of "ripeness" and gives you recipies to try it in. A wonderful cooking encyclopedia of vegetables.
A Bonus for the Home Gardener March 4, 2000
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
The title -"Vegetables"- says it all. This book is a wonderful choice to learn how to store, select and prepare individual vegetables in a variety of recipes which enhance that vegetable. Beautifully illustrated, it is organized alphabetically by vegetable. If you looking for more complete meals or information about vegetarian eating you will be disappointed -- the recipes are best used as side dishes for seasonal produce. For the money, I recommend Deborah Madison's "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone", I use it all the time, and I'm not a strict vegetarian.
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