Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

By S. Gardner

This has become my favorite cookbook. I have been vegetarian for nearly 20 years and I am an avid cook, and this book has provided nothing but perfect food, without meat, every time I have used it. I love good food. Food that is merely nutritious and not really good, also, is a bane to humanity. This food is not generally low-fat, but it is still whole, nutritious food. The desserts are great, the salads are great, the vegetable dishes are great. You name it, in this book, it's good.

The other thing that I love about this book is that Deborah Madison is not only a great chef she also knows how to translate her cooking talent into recipes that really WORK. I am disappointed by some chefs' cookbooks because it's obvious that they are excellent cooks, but their recipe-writing skills are sub-par. These, on the other hand, are well-tested, well-written recipes.

The food in this book is what I'd call fine food. Some recipes in other cookbooks are for everyday-type food that will get you by, and others are for trendy food that are novel to make once in a while. The recipes in this book direct you to make the kind of food that will have you talking the next day about how good it was, and they're not trendy. Most are also uncomplicated. The flavors are refined and you might call them sophisticated, but that's misleading because there's nothing pretentious about the recipes or the presentation. The sophistication comes from a cleanness to the palate that is presented here.

I have a large collection of cookbooks (200+) and this one definitely stands out. If you have others of Madison's cookbooks, such as the Savory Way or the Greens Cookbook, which are also both excellent, I suspect that you will find this one more accessible. There's a hint of preciousness in those other two books that I find lacking here. Madison seems less concerned about impressing us in this book and more relaxed in her approach. This has improved her style and has improved her food, as well.