Moosewood Restaurant New Classics by Moosewood Collective
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Book Reviews of Moosewood Restaurant New Classics
Book Review: Some good recipes, but why does it feel like a scrapbook?
Summary: 3 Stars
Moosewood tries to broaden its horizons once again with this new classics cookbook. Since the previous reviewer has already gone into detail some of the recipes, I'll just go directly to the overall impression.
First of all, the recipes themselves range from ok to decent. The American-style cusines fare better, but not great. A truely great dish should not taste like a sum of its parts, which unfortunately a couple of the recipes in this book do. The ethnic-inspired recipes are pretty ho-hum. The Thai curries are some of the blandest curries I've had (and I've had some bland ones). It's not even an issue of spiciness of the dish, it's simply that the spice combination left me feeling something is missing inside a dish. Lastly, the book itself does not feel like a unified cookbook. Rather, it feels like just different recipes thrown together into a book. There's no theme to it, no personal touch, and in fact, no great or terrible recipes. It's just an average, decent fallback for something you need to make quickly, if you're not looking for a mouth-aweing dish. If you're new to vegetarian cooking, the book will offer tons of ideas but little personlized touch for you to feel for the fundamentals of cooking, and if you're experienced, there are better recipes to be found. If you want a great new classic, try Martha Rose Schulman's 200 new vegetarian recipes instead.
Book Review: takes some effort to love this cookbook
Summary: 3 Stars
We were given this cookbook from a vegetarian friend of ours for our wedding. We do eat meat occasionally but the bulk of our dinners (6 out of 7) are vegetarian which means I was looking forward to getting some inspiration from this cookbook and I did but, frankly, it took me some effort!
My main problem with this cookbook is that a great deal of these recipes do not really make meals but are rather side dishes or snacks - sometimes with quite extensive ingredient-lists which in turn is way too much effort for just a side-dish or a snack! Unfortunately, just making a bigger serving of a recipe does not do the trick. Like some other reviewers said some recipes tasted like there was something missing. One thing I liked though was that ingredient-wise I was sometimes forced to leave my comfort zone. The extensive glossary at the end of the book was very helpful. So I tried some new things and some of them have actually made it into my standard repertoire, others I will not use again.
Finally, all recipes had a very similar palate. They were either Indian- or Thai-inspired (but not quite the real thing) or were reminiscent of classic Mediterranean cuisine, there were absolutely no surprise twists.
That said, I think it is a solid cookbook but definitely not my favorite.
Book Review: Others by them are better
Summary: 3 Stars
This book could be great, like so many of their others, but I think that it's gimmicky in that they rely way too much on soy products in this one. I'm all for adding soy to foods if it belongs there, but not if it is added just to add nutrition only. It can really ruin the texture of a dish, but they claim repeatedly that "no one will even know it's in there!" I think that if you have to hide something in your food, maybe it shouldn't be there at all. The one good thing about this, though, is that there are a lot of dishes for vegans in here.Where they don't rely on the soy gimmick, the food has been really wonderful, as always. Try these: lemon ricotta pancakes, Indian curried potato wrap, marinated feta with pita, and Muhallabia (cardamom-cinnamon) ice cream.
Book Review: Getting rid of this one right away!
Summary: 3 Stars
I have four other Moosewood cookbooks and could not find one recipe in this one that I wanted to make! The dishes are strange and unappealing and most seem to involve a lot more preparation time and unfamiliar ingredients (seaweed and goat cheese, for instance) than previous cookbooks. Get this one only if you are adventurous and love to spend lots of time preparing your meals.Book Review: Good for some--not useful to me
Summary: 3 Stars
I love the Moosewood style but have so many cookbooks I decided I would use this one very seldom, hence returned. Cookbook had nice creative & international,variety, but I just have too many!