The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation Author: Visit Amazon's Mollie Katzen Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0547571593 | Format: PDF
The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation Description
Amazon.com Review
Featured Recipes from The Heart of the Plate
Download the recipe for Caramelized Onion Frittata
Download the recipe for Chocolate Cream Pie
Download the recipe for Fully Loaded Buttermilk Corn Cakes
Download the recipe for Gazpacho Salad
From Booklist
Already renowned in vegetarian circles for her groundbreaking Moosewood Cookbook (1977), Katzen has productively spent the intervening decades expanding her repertoire and has retuned her remarkable cuisine to twenty-first-century tastes. Incorporating grains in novel ways, she offers a rich version of Stroganoff: mushrooms stewed with cabbage, and served atop dumplings made from barley. A plethora of pasta dishes address the heartiest appetites. One-dish meals ease dinnertime for the busy cook. Katzen clearly appreciates texture’s role in producing food that’s not just palatable but truly satisfying, incorporating crunchy and crispy accents to enhance what might otherwise be predictable vegetable fare. Desserts include homemade ricotta cheese. Where feasible, Katzen instructs on reformulating recipes to conform to vegan criteria. Thanks to increased public awareness of the importance of consuming more fruits and vegetables and cutting back on meat, there is built-in demand for Katzen’s innovative vegetarian cooking even among staunch carnivores. --Mark Knoblauch
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- Hardcover: 464 pages
- Publisher: Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (September 17, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0547571593
- ISBN-13: 978-0547571591
- Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.2 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
This book was given to me for my review.
The Heart of the Plate by Mollie Katzen is an excellent cookbook for both the comfort food, home cook and the gourmet. I am not vegan or vegetarian at this time, but it doesn't matter because the recipes are tasty for all palates. Katzen begins the cookbook with pantry tips and goes into the expected soups and salads. Her section on salads is especially thorough, and most of them are hearty enough to use as a main course. Katzen provides many tips and tricks on serving ideas and small add-ins to enhance the meals.
I loved the section on Cozy Mashes because autumn is fast approaching (oh, please, God), and I simply love mashes as a side or even as a main dish. Her repertoire is extensive, from beans to root vegetables to avocados and more. After mashes, she covers grains, providing a lot of variety from many different countries (the Spiced Basmati Pilaf with Nuts and Raisins is lovely), and I am especially happy to see several new risotto recipes I have never tried. I could live off of risotto, if I did not have to watch the carbs. Some recipes are longer and more detailed, but others are quicker and easier. Her directions are detailed, but the reader needs to know that that does not always mean that the recipe is really difficult. I think Katzen has done a credible job of making sure the book is user friendly for all cooking levels.
I am especially excited about some recipes in her Pasta and Asian Noodles section that are takes on "lasagna". While Katzen usually uses noodles, I can adapt these recipes to use eggplant or squash and still have a very yummy finished dish for my carb sensitive body. She has given me new ideas for adapting and combining ingredients.
I find reviews most useful when I have an idea of where the reviewer is coming from, so here goes. I've been a vegetarian (not vegan) for more than 20 years, and Katzen's "Moosewood Cookbook" and "Enchanted Broccoli Forest" lived on my shelves for years; I finally gave them away recently when I realized I hadn't cooked out of them for more than 10 years (most vegetarians just don't cook like that any more). But I've admired Katzen's work since back in the days when she was one of the few vegetarian-cookbook writers around. I'm also very picky about cookbooks I buy - I find that they tend to take over my kitchen shelves if I'm not careful, and I rarely purchase them. That said - I bought this one, I waited until I had made several recipes from the book before writing a review, and I found deciding on a star ranking to be a dilemma. Here's how I saw it. Warning, this is a very long review!
Overall: I agree with the reviewer who said that this book is not for the novice cook. More on this later.
Layout: intro and general. The book begins with the now-standard discussion of equipment and ingredients; fortunately this section is short. Next is a section on how to assemble a vegetarian menu that might be of use for new vegetarians; I myself never look at menu suggestions so I can't comment on this one. Many, though unfortunately not all, recipes are illustrated with gorgeous color pictures (I expect those who saw black-and-white photos were people with pre-prints.) One warning about the photographs: they often illustrate three or four recipes at once, so if you want your meal to look like that, you'll be using lots of pots and pans, and you'll be cooking for a long time.
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