Elizabeth Schneider's Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables set a standard for exact yet lively investigation. Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini follows in her earlier book's footsteps to create a compelling guide to 350 common and exotic vegetables. This seed-to-table exploration does more, however. In addition to its usefulness as a reference work (vegetables are, for example, listed by their market, botanical, and common names), the book offers 500 up-to-the-minute recipes--such as Shredded Yellow Squash with Garlic Chives and Baked Sweet Potato-Apple Puree with Horseradish--valuable advice on seasonality and selection, multiple-method cooking instructions, and color photos of all the entries that make market identification a breeze.

Interested in amaranth? Find its entry and discover, first, the magenta-veined plant's common aliases (among them, the Caribbean callaloo, the Indian bhaji, and the Korean namul); an engaging vegetable biography that distills information from many fields (for example, the Greeks thought amaranth immortal); information on selection, storage, and preparation (use the vegetable's tiniest leaves for salads; steam, braise, or sauté the larger "with garlic, shallots, tomato dice, and a touch of chilies"); and full-dress recipes (such as Garlicky Sauté of Amaranth and Tomatoes, Cuban Style). A final section, called Pros Propose, offers recipe sketches from cooking experts, like Paula Wolfert's Amaranth and Sheep's Milk Cheese. This lucid organizational scheme, common to all the entries, and Schneider's expert handling of it, promote a full yet relaxed familiarization with the selected vegetables. This is one of those few books that most cooks will want, as well as need, to own. --Arthur Boehm


Book Description
Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini: The Essential Reference is at once an encyclopedia, a produce market manual, and a treasure trove of recipes. With produce specialist Elizabeth Schneider as your guide, take a seed-to-table voyage with more than 350 vegetables, both exotic and common. Discover lively newcomers to the North American cornucopia and rediscover classic favorites in surprising new guises.In this timely reference, Elizabeth Schneider divulges the secrets of the vegetable kingdom, sharing a lifetime of scholarly sleuthing and culinary experience. In her capable hands, unfamiliar vegetables such as amaranth become as familiar as zucchini -- while zucchini turns out to be more intriguing than you ever imagined.Each encyclopedic entry includes a full-color identification photo, common and botanical names, and an engaging vegetable "biography" that distills the knowledge of hundreds of authorities in dozens of fields -- scientists, growers, produce distributors, and chefs among them.Practical sections describe availability, selection, storage, preparation, and basic general use. Finally, the author's fresh contemporary recipes reveal the essence of each vegetable and a culinary sensibility that food magazine and cookbook readers have trusted for thirty years. Each entry concludes with a special "Pros Propose" section -- spectacularly innovative recipes suggested by professional chefs.Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini: The Essential Reference is an indispensable resource for home cooks, food professionals, gardeners, information seekers, and anyone who simply enjoys good reading.


About the Author
Elizabeth Schneider has been demystifying fruits and vegetables for professional and home cooks for three decades. Her encyclopedic cookbook Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables: A Commonsense Guide is considered the primary reference on specialty produce. The "Produce Pro" series, the inspiration for Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, has appeared since 1989 in Food Arts, a journal for food professionals. Both this and "Vegetable Wise," a column in Eating Well magazine, have won James Beard Awards for best magazine feature series. Hundreds of Schneider's articles have been published in scores of magazines and newspapers, including Gourmet, Food & Wine, the New York Times, and Family Circle. Schneider is the author of three other books in addition to Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables: Better Than Store-Bought (with Helen Witty), Ready When You Are: Made-Ahead Meals for Entertaining, and Dining in Grand Style (with Dieter Hannig). She also has contributed to a dozen collaborative works. Her career achievements have been honored by a James Beard Who's Who of Food & Beverage Award.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Elizabeth Schneider deserves a special place of honor in the Vegetable Hall of Fame for this outstanding, all-in-one vegetable encyclopedia-cookbook-reference.

At 777 pages, with 500 recipes, 350 vegetables, and 275 color identification photographs, it's clearly a labor of love, impeccably researched and beautifully produced. The six pages of acknowledgments, with credits to professional chefs, scientists, scholars, produce distributors, and growers, give a clue to the wealth of information inside.

Now take a vegetable you think you know -- say, the artichoke -- and turn to pages 19–25. In this entry, Schneider walks you through the various varieties (shown in color photos) and gives a great tip on selection : "Squeezed, a fresh artichoke protests with a noisy squeak; a flabby one barely mumbles."

Next comes advice on artichoke storage, preparation, and cooking. Schneider has tried at least five cooking methods for each vegetable in the book, so she can recommend from experience which method does the most for each vegetable. In this case, she's not happy with the microwave method but likes steaming, steam baking, and a pressure-cooker method from Lorna Sass. Four artichoke recipes developed by Schneider follow, then a section called Pros Propose, in which Schneider sketches out recipes offered by chefs all over the country -- in this case, Brick-Flattened Fried Artichokes from Faith Willinger's Red, White & Greens and Artichoke and Pink Grapefruit Salad from Alice Waters's Chez Panisse Vegetables.

Now, imagine what Schneider can do for a vegetable you don't know -- like amaranth or cardoons, celeriac, or vegetables popular in Chinese cooking. And imagine what she can do for vegetables you are sure to have underplayed (or miscooked) for years, like okra, rutabaga, or even the zucchini.

Everywhere you turn in this book, you can find out something useful or interesting. Her method of cooking each vegetable five different ways often disproves conventional wisdom: It turns out that salting eggplant does not take away a bitter taste, nor do mushrooms taste best when sautéed. For best results, Schneider discovered that cucumbers should be sautéed, green asparagus roasted, but purple asparagus boiled, and sweetpotatoes steamed.

For all the length and heft of this book, you'll wish it were longer. Schneider has not included sections on the most common vegetables -- bell pepper, cabbage, corn, tomatoes, and lettuces -- but given the fantastic treatment every other vegetable gets, you'll wish she had. (Ginger Curwen)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini: The Essential Reference is at once an encyclopedia, a produce market manual, and a treasure trove of recipes. With produce specialist Elizabeth Schneider as your guide, take a seed-to-table voyage with more than 350 vegetables, both exotic and common. Discover lively newcomers to the North American cornucopia and rediscover classic favorites in surprising new guises. In this timely reference, Elizabeth Schneider divulges the secrets of the vegetable kingdom, sharing a lifetime of scholarly sleuthing and culinary experience. In her capable hands, unfamiliar vegetables such as amaranth become as familiar as zucchini -- while zucchini turns out to be more intriguing than you ever imagined.

Each encyclopedic entry includes a fullcolor identification photo, common and botanical names, and an engaging vegetable "biography" that distills the knowledge of hundreds of authorities in dozens of fields -- scientists, growers, produce distributors, and chefs among them.