Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison's Kitchen

Why do most of us crave fried chicken, mashed potatoes & gravy, corn, hot rolls, and apple pie? Perhaps it is because people tend to want to enjoy the comfort foods they grew up eating. Sometimes our families are extremely resistant to trying unfamiliar foods. Recently I created a new recipe . . . Beans, Greens and Pasta Buds. My 16-year-old son walked in while the soup was cooking, and asked me what I was making. He said it smelled great, but refused to try even a bite, once he knew what was in it. I recently changed my diet to mostly vegetarian foods; but my son and husband are unwilling to give up the meat. So I often prepare separate dishes. Since vegetarianism is new to me, I find books like this to be invaluable. I have hundreds of cookbooks but find myself sorting through them to find the "meatless" recipes. This book offers a comprehensive collection of wonderful, easy-to-make, and delicious recipes . . . and is a must-have for the new vegetarian. Meat . . . who needs it? Do your health a favor . . . buy this book and cook on! Lynette Fleming, Coauthor of Lunch Buddies: Buddy Up for a Better Diet

I recently became a vegetarian, and this book has proven invaluable in the kitchen. I thought my meat-free lifestyle would be nothing but dull stir-fried veg night after night, but this book has given me loads of easy, useful recipes that even my husband will eat!

I adore Deborah Madison; she is my favorite cookbook author. She just makes the kind of food I love to eat. She is the master of rustic, tasty, healthy whole-food recipes, and is better at herbing and zesting the ingredients than any other cookbook author I have come across. Making her food is very satisfying. Somehow she makes everything taste sublime. I will undoubtedly buy any book she writes. That said, this is my favorite of her books so far. The food is just so delicious, and none of the recipes are difficult. If you live anywhere in the vicinity of a great farmers' market, this is just the book to help you make use of the wonderful produce you can find there. Favorite recipes I've tried include Spinach Quesadillas, Yellow Peppers Stuffed with Quinoa, Black Bean Tostadas, Artichoke Fritatta, Masa Crepes with Chard, Winter Squash Lasagne, Whole Wheat Penne with broccoli and green olives, Gnocchi with winter Squash and Radicchio. If I pared down my whole cookbook collection, this book would be one of the 5 books I'd keep. In my opinion, this is also her best looking book so far, since the photos and graphics are much better than in the past. With each recipe, she includes go-withs that are to be found in two of her previous cookbooks. If you are a Madison fan already, you'll have these books, but since most of these recipes are full meals in themselves, you can also go without. This book is a must-have.

I love this book! It is great for exactly what I wanted to do...learn how to cook some fun, vegetarian dishes that even I wouldn't goof up! Every dish that I've tried has been a success...that's saying a lot since my mother's only cooking lesson was 'how to heat a can of corn.' One thing to mention is that this book is meant to build on Madison's other cookbooks. It is not meant to be a complete guide for basic family meal planning, just simple yet elegant main dish ideas suitable for casual entertaining. With our only child in junior high now, and my husband doing volunteer work, we are up to having about 1/3 the time that a serious cook does for making dinner, and these meals fit right in. Most of the recipes I've used take about 25-40 minutes to prepare, mostly because I'm really slow at cutting vegetables, finding where I set the teaspoon, etc. I guess you can't see the contents or preface above, so here's the layout of the chapters: 1. Savory Pies and Gratins 2. Vegetable Stews and Braises 3. Pasta with Vegetables 4. Crepes and Fritters 5. Mostly Tofu and some Tempeh 6. Eggs for Supper 7. Hearty Cool Weather Suppers 8. Light Meals for Warm Weather 9. Supper Sandwiches 10. Basics (eg, guacamole, peanut sauce, tapenade, warm goat cheese sauce) What I really like about this book is she explains things simply enough for a beginner, and uses mostly ingredients that I've heard of, but always takes things a step beyond what I'm familiar with, so I'm learning something. So if you are a food snob, this book is probably not pretentious enough for you. If you have a large family and don't feel like getting creative with dinner at the end of the day, and just want something you can throw together fast that will feed several and probably be edible, this book is not for you. But for a family of 3-4, or a couple who likes to have something special a few nights a week, this is just perfect. My favorite recipe is one for a couple of eggs cooked over mushrooms sauted in wine and bread crumbs...it's something I can throw together for myself in just a few minutes when I get home late, and I don't have to measure anything because you just put in as much of each ingredient as you like...and it tastes so good! About the wine recommendations--Not only is it good for your heart, but new research shows drinking red wine on a regular basis may help prevent or delay the onset of alzheimer's. Since both health problems run in my husband's family, the suggested wines have been a fun way to incorperate a very healthy habit.

`Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison's Kitchen' is, you guessed it, Deborah Madison's latest cookbook for her audience who eats everything but animal flesh. The photograph of the author in her kitchen pretty much says it all about what this book wants to do. There is no urban sophisticate among the many award placards from her `Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone' and no friendly farm girl from the spine of `Local Flavors'. This Deborah has the broad smile of someone who is about to cook me supper. Ms. Madison begins with a discourse of wordplay on the largely illusory difference between `supper' and `dinner'. Her premise, and the rationale behind her title, is that while dinner is a formal sit-down affair with courses and wine and the like, supper is much more casual, much more likely to be an ad hoc affair resulting from the casual invitation of some friends after bowling or church or a visit to the Farmer's Market. As something of a minor expert on language and a reader of quite a few cookbooks in the last two years, I simply do not find any consensus for this interpretation of these two words. Luckily, the remainder of the book depends not at all on this lexicographer's distinction. Unlike the encyclopedic `...Everyone' and the special interest of `...Flavors', this book is something of a `greatest hits' book based on the very sound premise that the amateur cook is served best by concentrating on doing a few recipes well instead of following the foodie path of learning to cook everything from guanciale (pig jowls) to Indian flatbreads. While I happen to lean more towards an interest in pig jowls than in limiting my range of recipes, I find this an excellent position for people for whom food is not a hobby, but they do like to cook well once or twice a week. This position is shared by everyone from Ina Garten to, in a somewhat modified form, Daniel Boulud. In Ms. Madison's case, the argument is at least three times stronger if you happen to also be someone who avoids eating animal flesh. All this means that the recipes in this book are expected to be better than average by either being a selection of the best recipes or average recipes rewritten to enhance their value to the average amateur cook. As an exercise, I compared the grilled vegetable sandwich recipes in this book with a similar one in `...Everyone' and found the newer recipe to be more interesting in that it replaces garlic mayonnaise with chipotle mayonnaise, replaces eggplant with zucchini, and replaces a baguette with tortillas. It also throws in some Anaheim chiles and some pepper jack cheese as options. I also compared the list of asparagus recipes in this book with the list in `...Everyone' and find no overlaps. On a personal, visceral level, Ms. Madison gets me where it counts by starting off with chapters on `savory pies and gratins' and `vegetable stews and braises', two of my very favorite types of dishes. These subjects should be a sure sign to everyone that this book