Review: “A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen”

Today I am offering a review of a cookbook: Jack Bishop’s A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen: Easy Seasonal Dishes for Family and Friends.

My sweetheart gave this book to me several months ago. I’ve spent those months reading the book (yeah, I read cookbooks!) and cooking from it, so that I could give a full review. Overall, I can say that this is a good cookbook, as it stands up to the ultimate test of any cookbook: the recipes usually perform according to directions, and they taste good.

A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen is proposed to be a seasonal vegetarian cookbook, and the recipes are arranged by season. I like that idea quite a lot, but I would like it more if the recipes were as seasonal as they purport to be. I think that the author is somewhat confused about the seasonality of some vegetables. For example, he raves about how carrots make him think of springtime, but mentions on the same page that this is because he buys carrots harvested in late fall and “hold them over” in his fridge until Spring. Yuck! Carrots that have been sitting in the fridge for a month are not at their best, and the several “Spring” recipes that feature these “fresh” carrots are not really seasonal. Mr. Bishop mentions that late fall carrots are sweeter than sumer carrots, but doesn’t mention why: cold weather causes root vegetables to increase in sweetness. In another example, he mentions that late Winter and early Spring, “when good fruit is hard to come by, oranges and grapefruits from Florida (and elsewhere) are reliably good.” This essentially meaningless statement was distracting in its pointlessness.

Another complaint about the book is that the ingredients used are sometimes expensive or hard to find. I live in a major port city, and some of those items are rare or dear here; the desperate vegetarian in a small town would have a very hard time sourcing ingredients for many of these recipes. Exotic oils and imported cheeses are beyond the reach of most home cooks.

Also, I have to question Mr. Bishop’s idea of “convenient.” He specifically states, in the introduction, that the recipes in his repertoire must be convenient, because he hasn’t hours to spend cooking. I’ve found that all of the recipes I have prepared took more than an hour from start to finish.

I would be more willing to forgive some of the slips in this book if the author were an unknown, or even known to be a hack. But Jack Bishop is a longtime executive editor of Cook’s Illustrated magazine, a mag renowned for its scientific, explanatory approach. He’s also a principal cast member of a TV show called “America’s test Kitchen” (I’ve never seen it, but I’ve read about it in CI.) And, he’s a home cook who claims to cook for his family every day. The book sometimes reads as though Mr. Bishop wasn’t really paying attention, such as the recipe where he first extols the virtues of freshly shelled peas… then calls for frozen peas to be used in the dish.

What I love about this book: the recipes. They are delicious, healthful, and really packed with vegetables! A lot of “vegetarian” cookbooks rely on starches and treat vegetables as garnish. The recipes in A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen are truly produce-centered! They not only taste good, but they feel good to eat. As a seasonal cookbook, A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen isn’t, in my opinion, entirely successful. At best, it’s semi-seasonal. As a cookbook in general, though, it’s a big success. So, I do recommend this book.