Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Really wonderful uses for homegrown vegetables - and even bought ones, 13 Jun 2007
I bought this book because my husband gardens enthusiastically by Sarah Raven's The Great Vegetable Plot, a present from his daughter.
I have a lot of cookery books on my shelves. But having just browsed through Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook, I can tell you at once that I will be using this book often. Some of her recipes I have already used; she is generous throughout with other people's ideas (and acknowledges them). It is tremendously useful to have, gathered together in one volume, so many things to do with the sometimes over-abundant produce of the potager. And indeed to showcase those first delicate broad beans, asparagus spears, peas and new potatoes.
The emphasis here is on vegetables and fruit, but the book is not vegetarian. Where a few slivers of raw ham will make things more delicious, there they are. And delicious the recipes look. Ms Raven's days working at the River Café shine through her use of fresh garden produce.
But if you have no garden, the book will still give you plenty of ideas. And I mean plenty. This is not one of those cookbooks with only one recipe to a spread. There are lots, and lots. And the introduction to each fruit or vegetable contains still more ideas, often simple and quick, always mouth-watering.
The book is well produced with thick pages and two ribbon markers (already in use chez moi - and the book only arrived here where I live in rural France with the postman around midday today).
The index looks excellent (really important if you are searching for a way of using a glut of a particular herb, or lesser ingredient). I would have enjoyed a bibliography, but the generous acknowledgement of sources throughout the text adequately replaces one.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Can't stop cooking from this, 6 Jul 2007
I wondered whether this would be a bit too 'lifestyle' orientated, but while it does have some beautiful photography, it is packed to the brim with recipes I want to cook...I gave up making a shortlist because there were so many. On my cookbook shelf next to my two other 'most used' cook books, The Kitchen Diaries and How to Eat.
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33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A truly inspirational book, 13 Nov 2007
'Sarah Raven' will be a familiar name to some, as she is a presenter on TV's `Gardener's World`, with 'Monty Don', who pens on the back cover:-
`Sarah is a superb cook and a truly fine gardener. Every page of this wonderful book is rich with authenticity and experience and a celebration of the best that a garden can produce. It is an inspiration.'
In her book, `The Great Vegetable Plot', she wrote:-
`A vegetable garden is a beautiful thing to make, with the bonus of producing the best possible things to eat.
If you get it right the whole place can become your market, your haven and your playground.'
`Garden Cookbook' is all about the pleasure that fruit and vegetables can give you; its aim is to put them at the centre of every meal.
It's also a practical guide to all that is wonderful in the edible plant kingdom, with more than 450 recipes using the vegetable garden - or a good seasonal market or greengrocer - as both their source and inspiration.
It is not a vegetarian book although it contains plenty of recipes that have nothing but vegetables in them......
At university, like so many before me and since, I read `Elizabeth David' over and over again, and I cooked with her books to hand.......Then, to support myself through medical school, I waitressed at the River Café, which has done so much to bring the Italian culinary tradition into the English mainstream.
These influences moulded me to a way of cooking that is based on really good ingredients and that focuses on taste rather than on appearance.
Fruit and vegetables lend themselves to simplicity; the less you do to them, the better.
Food cooked this way is alive with the flavour of its raw ingredients.
A great bonus of eating local, seasonal food is that your diet will never be repetitive. As the seasons unfold, old favourites recur and new opportunities present themselves.
And, for the most part, there's no need for it to have travelled from the other side of the world.....
I've poured enormous amounts of myself and my life into this book. I think of it as a compendium of everything I've loved in the garden and the kitchen over the last 15 or 20 years.
I`m hoping that you will cook your way through it.....
Harvesting and cooking from the garden is one of my greatest pleasures in life.'
The vibrant cover opens to 464 shiny high quality pages and with the two cheery coloured ribbon page makers - one green/one orange to keep your places - it is already apparent that this is going to be a quality publication.
Simply split into six 2-monthly chapters then subdivided into the seasonal-relevant featured produce, completed with a comprehensive index.
Interspersed with on-location photography and some of the recipes featured, from Jonathan Buckley.
Each chapter opens with relevant information about the individual fruit or vegetable featured, including helpful, down-to-earth preparation advice, e.g.:-
Cabbage
When you are preparing cabbage, rip of the leaves one at a time and get rid of most of the central stem. It cooks at a different rate to the leaves so chuck it away......Cabbage has a versatile flavour which is delicious with butter and plenty of salt and pepper.....If on a diet, treat it like pasta, cut it up into fine spaghetti-like strands and serve it with a scattering of Parmesan cheese....
As well as green or white cabbage, at this time of year you must have a few meals of red. The virtues of red cabbage are its incredible colour and its texture, which is firmer than green. It will take more cooking, so it is the ideal vegetable for rich, reduced slow-cooked dishes like braised red cabbage and soup. With an added acid - vinegar or wine - the colour fixes as a brilliant magenta.
Without this, it can turn an unappetising grey.'
Then follows a few recipes using the described item.
Each recipe is clearly laid out with an opening note, number of servings, the list of ingredients and the method.
Recipes include:-
Savoy Cabbage and Coriander Soup
Seville Marmalade
Mandarin Sorbet
Rosemary and Pork Farfalle
Sage Leaf Tempura
Fillet of Beef with Rocket
Vegetable Korma
Spring Greens Risotto
Spinach and Gruyère Tart
Potato Gratin with Sorrel
Asparagus Omelette
Broad Bean Crostini
Caesar Salad
Braised Globe Artichokes
Smashed Roast New Potatoes with Garlic & Rosemary
Pea Purée
Strawberry and Black Pepper Ice Cream
Peach Melba
Beetroot Relish
Blackcurrant Cakes
Almond Meringues
Cherry Clafoutis
Sweet Cucumber Pickle
Lavender Crème Brulée
Smoked Haddock and Nasturtium Fish Cakes
Salad Niçoise
Gooseberry Fool
Buckwheat Pancakes
Whole Fish stuffed with Fennel
Mint and Apple Jelly
Sungold Tomato Focaccia
Quick Tomato Tart
Pizza
Kentish Apple Cake
Moussaka
Chilli Chocolate
Rowan Jelly
Cranachan
Fresh Fig Tart
Sweet Potato Gratin
Walnut Tart
Pear, Apple and Quince Charlotte
Game Salad with Pomegranate
Cranberry Vodka
Vegetable Stock
Scotch Broth
Horseradish Dumplings
This book is further enhanced by the charming acknowledgements given to all who have helped and inspired, such as, for the following recipe:-
Chorizo with Potatoes
`Originally a Nigella Lawson recipe championed by Nigel Slater in `Real Food', this is a quick, cheap and easy dish.......Just replace 100g chorizo with 100g morcilla. The morcilla will break up during the cooking, thereby enriching the sauce.......'
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