Product Description

In this gorgeous cookbook, which was named the National Winner of the 2003 Tabasco Community Cookbook Awards, Shirley Kerins shares her wealth of knowledge about growing and cooking with herbs. Featuring a full range of dishes, from appetizers, salads, side dishes, soups and breads to entrees, preserves, desserts, and beverages, the book includes an innovative Pad Thai Pesto, a tried-and-true Herbed Vichyssoise, and a luscious Apple-Rosemary Tarte Tatin. Gardeners will find A Celebration of Herbs to be an essential reference, with information on cultivating, harvesting, drying, and storing herbs and an extensive listing of plant and seed suppliers in North America. Peppered throughout the cookbook are excerpts from the Huntington Library's collection of rare herbals and botanical books from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #435414 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Herbs, The Journal of the Herb Society, UK, June 2003
This is a book to enjoy on many levels, beautifully produced, a pleasure to read and with mouthwatering recipes.

Foreword Magazine
Kerins shares her knowledge about cooking with herbs through an eight-step program that progresses through experimenting with soups and sauces.

Sunset Magazine, August 2003
An amazing value...more than 200 recipes, such as goat cheese and basil ravioli and lemon thyme poached peaches.

Customer Reviews

Marvelous
Ms. Kerins is a well known herbalist. Her book is informative, with easy herbal recipes & marvelous historical herbal prints.
For those interested in useing herbs, knowing where to purchase reputable seeds & plants this book is a winner !

Fresh Herbs or Dried, these growers are great cooks!
A Celebration of Herbs is a cookbook that pairs herbs with the right foods in the most tantalizing ways. Compiled by long-time herb enthusiast Shirley Kerins from recipes submitted by the staff of the world-famous Huntington Gardens, this high-quality book enriches our souls as well as our palates by offering us interesting and pertinent information on the herbs we are cooking with.

Especially helpful for beginning herb users is the chapter on "Learning to Use Herbs in Cooking." In this chapter, Ms. Kerins has outlined her "Eight-Step Program for Learning to Cook With Herbs" that is sure to make cooking with herbs a snap!

Growing tips abound and one would expect no less, since Ms. Kerins was the curator of the Huntington Herb Gardens for over 20 years. The traditional recipe categories are there, of course, but they are generously salted with helpful tidbits and historical information as one would expect from someone who has lovingly tended herbs for so many years. 

A real treat is the reproduction of 24 color drawings from Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal, published in 1737. One of the 60 known copies of this two-volume gem is housed in the Huntington's rare book room. 

This book is sure to become a classic worthy of the world class traditions of the Huntington.

A Cookbook With a Difference - Learn to use Herbs
Anyone interested in herbs and their uses for cooking will find "A Celebration of Herbs" a welcome addition to their personal library. The book opens with a short history of the Huntington Herb Garden. A section follows this on learning how to use herbs when cooking and includes a specific eight-step program. In addition to specific recipes, part of the point of the book is to teach the reader how to use herbs to enhance their own recipes.

Some of the divisions in the book include herb butters, sauces, pestos, salsas, marinades, appetizers, salads, salad dressings, soups, breads, pasta, pizza, vegetables, side dishes, main courses, desserts, jams, jellies, and beverages. Near the end is a table of herb names, descriptions, cultivation notes, culinary uses and comments that is extremely helpful when looking for something specific. The last piece of the book contains information on herb sources. For those interested in using various herbs to spice up, add zest, or otherwise improve their recipes this is an excellent book.