Your Organic Kitchen: The Essential Guide to Selecting and Cooking Organic Foods - Softcover

Cool, Jesse Ziff

3.91

11 ratings by Goodreads

9781579546625: Your Organic Kitchen: The Essential Guide to Selecting and Cooking Organic Foods

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1579546625 ISBN 13: 9781579546625

Publisher: Rodale Books, 2002

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Organic foods are the fastest-growing trend in cooking. In Your Organic Kitchen, nationally known chef and restauranteur Jesse Ziff Cool shows you the how's and why's of cooking with organics, from stocking your organic pantry to combining seasonal flavors and creating exciting, elegant dishes. Best of all, she offers up a treasure trove of 160 magnificent recipes that reflect her love of food and her commitment to sustainable agriculture and cuisine.

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Review:

"To me," says chef-author Jesse Ziff Cool, "restaurants as well as home kitchens should be places where food is simply as pure as it can be, and always served with love." In Your Organic Kitchen, Cool has culled 160 recipes from her 25 years in the restaurant business and from her food-loving family to share with the public. Cool is an unabashed believer in organically grown and raised foods: pure foods equal healthier bodies, she says, plus foods raised without pesticides or hormone enhancements simply taste better.

Cool divides her cookbook into eight seasons, distinguishing, for example, between the first juicy strawberries of early summer and the bounty of fresh tomatoes and peppers in midsummer. Each section contains recipes for appetizers, main and side dishes, and desserts. She balances savory vegetarian options like Roasted Root Vegetables with Apples and Mustard with nonvegetarian dishes like Lamb Burgers with Caramelized Shallots.

Clear and straightforward, many of the recipes contain ingredients that you will already have on hand or that are easily purchased at your local market. To help you build an organic kitchen, Cool gives suggestions on how to begin stocking your pantry with organic spices, pastas, and grains. Essays on organic farms and companies crop up throughout the book--although they read rather like product advertisements and would work better if simply represented in the list of organic food providers in the back of the book. While Your Organic Kitchen is intended for organic cooks, you can still make the recipes if you don't have all organic ingredients, and you should--these recipes are too delectable not to try. --Dana Van Nest

From the Inside Flap:

For more than 26 years, Jesse Ziff Cool has been dazzling customers with innovative culinary creations prepared from fresh, local organic ingredients. At her Flea St. Cafe in Menlo Park, California, about 85 percent of the food served is organic. Jesse grew up in a loving family who respected the old traditional ways of growing, gathering, and preparing foods, and she passed down these values to her own children. As down-to-earth as she is talented, Jesse embodies the organic philosophy and lifestyle. In other words, she walks the walk.

Now you, too, can walk along with Jesse. In Your Organic Kitchen, she extends a welcoming hand and shares with you all that you'll need to know about how--and why--to embrace the booming organic movement. Much more than a cookbook, Your Organic Kitchen provides a history of organic farming, convincing answers to the question "Why choose organic?," detailed instructions on how to stock your organic pantry, and hundreds of practical kitchen tips on cooking organically.

Still, the recipes comprise the heart and soul of Your Organic Kitchen. When Jesse opens her recipe box, she reveals a veritable treasure chest of 160 tantalizing creations that showcase organic seasonal ingredients. Because produce changes during each season, the recipes in Your Organic Kitchen are divided into eight seasons instead of the usual four. With delights like early spring's Orange-Steamed Chicken and Asparagus, midsummer's Zesty Zucchini Quesadillas, autumn's Pork Chops with Cherry Port Sauce, and the deep of winter's Parsnip and Beet Soup with Dill Cream, cooks will be inspired throughout the year. In addition to Jesse's own recipes, you'll find tasty contributions from eight of her chef-friends, including Alice Waters, Nora Pouillon, and Michael Romano.

A varied combination of meat, poultry, seafood, and vegetarian dishes ensure that Your Organic Kitchen will please every palate, and 120 lush color photographs make this book a savory feast for the senses.

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