Product Description

The Greens Cookbook is that rarity, a book that truly represents a revolution in cooking. Here are the recipes that helped to create the boldly original and highly successful Greens Restaurant on San Francisco Bay. Not only for vegetarians, this book caters to everyone who seeks delight in cooking and eating. Using an extraordinary range of fresh ingredients in imaginative and delicious ways, it shows how to present a feast for the eyes as well as for the palate.
The Greens Cookbook contains more than 260 recipes for all seasons, all occasions, all tastes. From bright, simple salads to beautifully spiralled roulades, here is a provocative, sophisticated and varied fare, dedicated to elegance and balance, taste and texture, color and freshness.
The Greens Cookbook presents everything you need to know to create and enjoy at home meals that draw rave reviews in the restaurant. Inside you will find: Inspiring menus for spring, summer, winter, fall. Everything from easy-to-prepare dishes for two to meals for a gala feast. The first guide to selecting wines with vegetable dishes. Glossaries of unfamiliar ingredients and useful kitchen equipment. A generous and encouraging text that helps develop your skill and self-expression as a cook. Insightful professional tips heading each recipe, and much more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42873 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04
• Released on: 2001-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

Amazon.com Review
Packed with recipes from the boldly original and highly successful Greens Restaurant in San Francisco that regularly please vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike, Greens is this cook's personal favorite cookbook. From New Potato and Grilled Pepper Pizza to Zuni Stew, these recipes are consistently innovative and delicious. --MTB

"I consider Greens to be the ultimate vegetarian restaurant. The cuisine is elegant, inspiring, and astonishingly creative. Many of us have long awaited this major event in cookbook publishing. Congratulations!" --Mollie Katzen, Moosewood Cookbook

From Publishers Weekly
The founding chef of the Zen Center of San Francisco's Greens Restaurant tantalizes readers with more than 275 stellar vegetarian recipes. Drawing upon a variety of traditionsSouthern France and Italy, Asia, Mexico and the American SouthwestMadison encourages the use of fresh vegetables, herbs and spices, quality oils and other staples, the building of flavors with stocks and the harmonizing of tastes, textures and colors. Mealtimes will be vibrant, sensory celebrations when readers serve up Mexican vegetable soup with lime and avocado, red and yellow pepper tart, goat-cheese pizza with red onions and green olives, zucchini-and-basil filo with pine nuts, blueberry cream-cheese tart and Brazilian chocolate cake. A cornucopia of seasonal menus, extensive directions, wine suggestions, and glossaries of kitchen equipment and ingredients enhance this superior collection. Brown wrote The Tassajara Bread Book, etc. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Reading through these delicious recipes, I'm impressed by a certan refined taste and style and consistently critical and good palate that comes through.  The book is especially important because it's vegetarian, and the excellence of ingredients makes the dishes irresistible."
--Alice Waters, Chez Panisse

"For all of us who remember the glorious dishes Deborah Madison created at Greens, this book is a particular pleasure.  What makes it special is not only her enticing and original way with fruits and vegetables, but her generous and inventive spirit."
--Carol Field, The Italian Baker

"This dazzling cookbook presents a new cuisine that is intelligent, inventive and above all delicious.  This is brilliantly crafted food that.just happens to be made without meat.  Bravo!"
--Anthony Dias-Blue, CBS Radio Food Critic and Nationally Syndicated Columnist, American Wine

Farm-fresh produce never tasted so good.  The Greens Cookbook elevated vegatarian cooking to new heights.  Every page introduces you to a wonderfully inventive recipe."
--Diane Rossen Worthington, The Cuisine of California

"I consider Greens to be the ultimate vegetarian restaurant.  The cuisine is elegant, inspiring and astonishingly creative.  Many of us have long awaited this major event in cookbook publishing.  Congratulations!"
--Mollie Katzen, Moosewood Cookbook, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest -- Review

Customer Reviews

Worth it just for the guacamole...
When I made a handful of recipes from Deborah Madison's cookbook, "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone," I wasn't incredibly impressed with the flavors. Well, everything that her other cookbook isn't, this one is. "The Greens Cookbook," based on the cooking of the Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, delivers enough fantastic flavors for any two cookbooks.

Recipes are laid out very well. This cookbook covers the basics right down to brown rice and egg pasta; it never leaves you stranded wondering if you have a recipe for such-and-such. Also included are seasonal menus, wine pairings with vegetarian food, a glossary of ingredients, and a list of useful kitchen tools.

But this cookbook doesn't stop there. There's a Wild Rice and Hazelnut Salad that includes currants and orange juice. There's an Asparagus Soup that's quite good. The Mexican Vegetable Soup with Lime and Avocado is fantastic! There's a Basque Pumpkin and White Bean Soup, a Pumpkin Soup with Gruyere Cheese, a Grilled Tofu Sandwich, Creole Egg Salad Sandwich, Basil Fettucine with Green Beans Walnuts and Creme Fraiche, Spinach Noodle Pudding, Potatoes and Chanterelles Baked in Cream, Squash Stew with Chilies Spices and Ground Nuts, and an absolutely fantastic Cheese and Nut Loaf... among many other fantastic recipes.

This cookbook does occasionally call for the odd hard-to-find ingredient like hazelnut oil, but it doesn't get out of hand, and I think it's quite worth it. Ms. Madison takes her inspiration from all sorts of cuisines to wonderful effect. All in all this is a fantastic cookbook, whether or not you're a vegetarian!

Complicated, but worth it
This, together with Yamuna Devi's "The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking," is my favorite cookbook.

As has been mentioned in other reviews here, the recipes are somewhat complicated. I am slowly working my way through the book and have already attempted almost 50 of the recipes.

The first few recipes were daunting and I was tempted to give up on the book, but the more recipes I tried, the easier it got. I found that I was learning something.

As others have mentioned, I also don't have all day to prepare a meal, and more often than not, I will only cook from this book on weekends, though to be fair, not all of the recipes are as time-consuming as they seem.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who also considers cooking a hobby and not just a means to an end.

Not the right cookbook for me
I'm sure every recipe in this cookbook is delicious, but I seldom use it and regret buying it. This would be a good book for people who see cooking as a hobby: something they do occasionally, for fun, without worrying about time, convenience, health or expense. For everyday cooking, it's pretty much useless. The recipes are all quite time-consuming and complicated, requiring, for instance, special stock which must be homemade and for which store-bought substitutes would be unacceptable. Lots of the recipes are heavy on the butter and cream, which is fine for special occasions but not the way I want to cook on a regular basis.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for special-occasion recipes. Everything I've cooked out of it has turned out great, and I would definately consult it for dinner parties or similar occasions. But I don't think it will be a particularly useful cookbook for busy people trying to eat in a reasonably healthy manner.