Vegetable Love

Barbara Kafka has been shaping the way America cooks for three decades. Sheand#8217;s doing it again.

With her customary originality, thoroughness, and passion for great cooking, Barbara Kafka has created the cookand#8217;s ultimate vegetable resource: 750 original recipes showcasing everything she adores about the vegetable world, from the lowly green bean to the exotic chrysanthemum leafand#8212;even stretching the definition to include potatoes, mushrooms, and avocados just because sheand#8217;s crazy mad for them.

Her love of vegetables shows in every dish, each impeccably researched, consistently foolproof, and put to the Kafka taste test. Among these delectable dishes are dozens of essays, including personal reflections on the garden and migrations in the vegetable world, for example; all are erudite and unfailingly entertaining.

Kafkaand#8217;s book within a bookand#8212;an at-a-glance, weand#8217;ve-done-all-the-work-for-you Cookand#8217;s Guideand#8212;provides practical, encyclopedic information on how to buy, measure, substitute, and prepare every food that ever called itself a vegetable.

"Kafka, a 20-year veteran cookbook writer whose credits include Roasting: A Simple Art and Soup: A Way of Life, allows vegetables to take center stage in this encyclopedic tome. Her collection of inspired recipes isn't about vegetarianism; many include meats, fish and dairy. Rather, it's about the pure enjoyment of the taste of vegetables: 'the sweet seductive perfume of slowly sauting onions, the impossibly vivid red of roasted peppers, the slow dance of eating an artichoke.' Kafka's treatment is broad (she covers avocados, tomatoes and rhubarb) and includes classic dishes like Braised Fennel or Chilies Rellenos with Corn alongside more inventive fare, la Green Bean Frapp, and A Satin of Oysters and Tapioca. Sections on unusual foodstuffs like nettles and cactus pads are fascinating, but less charming is the book's layout, which unhelpfully groups vegetables according to their area of origin. A generic 'Cook's Guide' at the end strays rather startlingly from the book's trajectory, providing techniques and recipes for basic sauces, breads, stuffings and more, plus tips for choosing and storing various vegetables, which might have been more helpful in the sections featuring each vegetable. Nonetheless, Kafka has created an appetizing addition to the kitchen bookshelf. 50 photos." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Kafka has created the cook's ultimate vegetable resource: 750 original recipes showcasing everything from the lowly green bean to the exotic chrysanthemum leaf, even stretching the definition to include potatoes, mushrooms, and avocados.

Few have done more to define how Americans prepare food than Barbara Kafka, whose IACP and James Beard award-winning books Roastingand Microwave Gourmetmade two underutilized techniques central to everyday cooking. Ms. Kafka is a former food editor of Vogueand a frequent contributor to The New York Times. She lives in New York and Vermont.Christopher Styler has enormous culinary range: He is a chef, cookbook writer, editor, restaurant consultant, and culinary producer of some of PBS-TVand#8217;s most successful cooking series. He lives in New Jersey.