Moosewood Restaurant New Classics: 350 Recipes for Homestyle Favorites and Everyday Feasts

The first recipe I tried in this book was the Moosewood Muffins -- which I have now made over fifty times. Yes, they are that good! I actually wrote out the recipe and taped it on a kitchen cupboard so it would always be handy. You can vary it to include *anything*. Even graham crackers. Even three different types of nuts. It accomodates everything; that recipe is magic. And all of the other recipes in this book are fabulous too. Like every Moosewood cookbook, there is a lot of variation; expect this book to take you everywhere from France, to Japan, and back to America for some vegetarian down home cookin'. The few fish recipes that are included are also excellent. There are also menu suggestions, which make planning meals easy. And the recipes in this book are also more simple than The Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special or Moosewood Restaurant Celebrates -- though not quite as much as Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers, so it's a good middle ground. If you like cooking, and you also love eating, and you want the food you serve to be healthy and delicious -- I highly recommend this book.

I bought this book a few months ago and use it at least three times a week. It includes everything from dips to desserts, to larger dinner dishes that can be made and refigerated and brought to work for a cheerful, filling break in the day! I have even convinced my dad that you don't need to put meat in every meal to make things taste good. My personal favorites are the lasagna primavera, italian gratin, vegan chocolate cake, apple zuchini muffins...I guess I could go on and on! good stuff here. I recommend it to anyone who likes to cook, eat, and feel healthy afterward.

I have made several dozen of the recipes contained in this book, and almost all have been something I would definitely make again! One feature I really enjoy is an estimated time required to both prepare and cook each dish, so you can easily thumb through, looking for something which fits your time schedule. One thing I did not appreciate was the excessive use of refined sugar in every single one of the dessert recipes. I assumed that Moosewood would be more concerned with making desserts and cookies with maple syrup, honey, etc., but unfortunately, I was wrong.Overall, I think the book is great and am planning to buy it as a gift for several family members.

Is this a "new classic" and what's in this book for the average cook who wants to cook vegetarian food? This heavy tome is packed with useful recipes and is all over the map, both ethnically and in types of recipes. As other Moosewood cookbooks, this is a vegetarian cookbook, but with asides into fish, which I don't mind--being one who limits meat but has not problem eating it. Some people do view fish as living creatures, which, of course, they certainly are. What's also new here compared to the dairy-laden earlier books is a venture into a few vegan recipes that leave out all milk, egg and other animal-source product, including a recipe for very useful mock sour cream. So there's a little something for everyone, vegetarian, limited vegetarian and even vegan. The recipes tend to the family-style rather than super-gourmet. One of the most useful recipes for me is a vegetable broth. This is a very good recipe base all kinds of soups. I despise the taste of canned broths and it's a nuisance to make chicken stock from scratch. Vegetable stock freezes well and this recipe makes a particularly flavorful version, using carrots, onions, celery, potatoes and garlic. The potatoes, in particular add consistency to the broth. The recipe offers either sweet potato or carrot for that sweet-spicy element and the sweet potato version also adds body to the broth. There is a version for mock-chicken broth, and an Asian ginger flavored broth base as well. Italian dishes dominate the recipes, lots of pasta sauces, including a vegetarian kind of Bolognese (meat gravy), a good basic tomato sauce, frittatas, risottos and cioppino fish stew. There are also plenty of diversions into novelties such as an interesting peach salsa.The breads lean more to biscuits and cornbread than to yeast breads and the dessert section is loaded with cookies. There are also sections on sandwiches, wraps and mock burgers. In summary, this is a very good vegetarian-based home cooking book, maybe something like Joy of Cooking - Veggie-Style. In that respect, this is a new classic, and certainly found a welcome home on my cooking bookshelf.

I bought this volume, along with another Moosewood collection, a little over a month ago. To say that I'm totally hooked would be an understatement. I've done more than twenty five of their wonderful recipes. Most are SO good I can't wait to make them again, but I keep finding more and more new ones to do and never get back to them. The soups in here are simply extraordinary, wonderful bean soups, rich vegetable soups, and the many vegetable sides are their equal.I suspect that Jane Brody's excellent Good Food Book, my kitchen bible, has been displaced by the Gospel according to Moosewood.