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The Essential Vegetable Reference
A Review by Jill Owens

Since opening Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini: The Essential Reference approximately an hour ago, I've raved about it (and practically drooled on it) to seven people now. I haven't actually tested any of the recipes yet -- although I'm planning to as soon as possible -- but their names alone: Salad of Crunchy Artichoke and Endive with Honeyed Lemon, Oven-Crisped Large Oyster Mushrooms, and Cranberry-Glazed Long Red Italian Radishes, to cite a few -- are making me hungry.

Elizabeth Schneider really does seem to have created the ultimate reference guide for vegetables, and I should know -- those books are amongst my favorite cookbooks, as a vegetarian. (Though the stars of these recipes are vegetables, many also include meat.) At 777 pages, with tons of gorgeous color photography, any vegetable you can think of -- really, I dare you -- has its own loving tribute, plus quite a few that I, at least, had never heard of -- African horned cucumber, anyone? Chickweed? Tindora?

Besides the photographs for easy visual identification, Schneider lays out the history and provenance of the vegetable, its basic use, selection, storage, and preparation information (which is detailed and thorough), and then lists several recipes, which manage to be both elegant and generally simple. There's plenty of Best Recipe-esque advice in here, as well; Schneider states in the introduction that "the first thing I do in the kitchen is try to forget all I've learned about cooking. I steam, boil, bake, sauté, simmer in broth, microwave each subject -- unadorned, peeled and not, stemmed and not, whole and sliced -- to find its culinary raison d'etre." This thoroughness leads her (and the reader) to conclude that while green asparagus is best roasted, purple asparagus is best boiled, and that if you can't celebrate the sliminess of okra as an essential part of its charm, you just shouldn't eat it (something I've been saying, as a transplanted Southerner, for what feels like forever. Validation!).

I only wish I'd had this book a few months ago, when I picked up maitake mushrooms, kohlrabi, and fiddlehead ferns at the farmers' market here in Portland; there are four recipes each for those ingredients, and they all sound authoritatively excellent. I should add that the mycological information alone makes this book worth having; there are far, far more recipes for unusual and specialty mushrooms in Vegetables than I've seen in any other cookbook (I didn't even know you could eat puffballs, honestly). Another lovely touch is the "Pros Propose" section at the end of each entry, in which chefs from around the world share their favorite ways (and, often, recipes) to prepare each vegetable.

If you only buy one cookbook this year, Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini gets my most enthusiastic vote. It would be a beautiful, practical, and very much appreciated gift, to yourself or anyone else you know who is interested in flavorful, fresh, and occasionally experimental cuisine.