Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables: A Commonsense Guide

I have the original of this book and find myself constantly reviewing it every time I come back from the tropical food markets. This book is very helpful even if one is familiar with and have grown up eating these kinds of fruits and vegetables. This book provides americanized recipes which is good because aside from being nutritious, most of these fruits and vegetables are beautiful and aesthetically presentable. You can serve fruits and vegetables that do not need to be masked by some gumbo-colored sauce. If you are the kind of cook who likes to serve beautiful dishes this book comes handy. You don't even have to follow the recipes just to use the vegetables. Once you become familiar with the vegetables you will discover how compatible they are with the common vegetables found in your regular supermaket on a dish of your own recipe. For example you could prepare a chicken dish with sliced tomatoes, potatoes, red and green bell peppers,carrots and bok choy with thickened chicken broth with your own choice of spices. The book details the following for each fruit and vegetable: Scientific name, description, beautiful illustrations, selection and storage, preparation and nutritional highlights.

Is there a special section in the produce department of your favorite up-scale supermarket that has mysterious new plants with unfamliar names such as atemoya, boniato, burdock or calabaza? Have you tried carambola, cassava, chayote or cherimoya? No? If you had a book filled with descriptions of exotic fruits and vegetables would you try them, especially if the book has delicious recipes? Yes?Then this is a book you should own. It will help you explore 80 different fruits and vegetables, some of them strange and delicious, others just strange. The book has about 420 recipes for you to try. Enough for you to find some new favorites.

I love this volume but would still place The Victory Garden as the first essential vegetable cookbook; then I'd place this as the second vegetable cookbook for a well-stocked kitchen.The book is arranged alphabetically by plant. An index in the back allows you to find produce by an alternative name. An index in the front sorts the recipes by type.To give an indication of its range the first few entries are: arugula, asian pear, atemoya, blood orange, bok choy, bolete, boniato, breadfruit ... The books gives a basic introduction to the history and geography of the plant, guides for selection and storage, basic preparation, nutritional value and recipes. For breadfuit, for a green breadfruit there is a salad recipe, for a medium ripe on there are soup and pudding recipes.The recipes are all practical, everyday meal recipes. This book is an excellent guide for using the produce items that are more recently added to your supermarket produce bins.

The cover says "from arugula to yuca," and this book has recipes for everything in between: boniato, carambola, lychee, quince, and more common produce like sweet onions, mustard greens, mango and kiwi. Recipes are practical, easy to use, and there's a description of each produce item with hints on how to select it, how to store it and how to prepare it. I already have a copy; I'm buying one now as a gift.