My taste testing video: Youtube
*a modern way to cook, 150+ vegetarian recipes for quick, flavor-packed meals.*
Quick, being that if you have the mindset of the author’s prepping and cooking “practice” in place along with the proper equipment, yes-you CAN make quick flavor-packed meals!
I come from a traditional upbringing of cooking-meaning brought up in the seventies but raised from the influence of the sixties. The new “modern” ways of cooking is something I’m still catching up with.
I love the idea of cooking using fresh and healthy ingredients, I just don’t like having to go to the store all the time for them.
So, coming from a person like me, here goes my review.
The book itself is lovely in a farm-fresh/french countryside way.
I loved sitting down with this book The author writes and explains how this book will work for the reader. How the ingredients of her recipes will affect us and our lives.
A couple things I really loved about this book:
The author includes a nice paragraph before each recipe – like the history of where each recipe came from and how she has changed it in to something new, healthy and modern.
My other favorite highlights throughout this book are her pairings-like her 10 pairings of omelet fillings. She puts each pairing in six categories: Main Vegetable, Backup Vegetable, Accent Flavor, Backup Flavor, and Richness.
I also appreciate that even though the author uses a lot of healthy and fresh ingredients, you WILL still find some “fun” ingredients like sourdough bread and actual ….cheese! (NOTE: There are a few ingredients the author will suggest substitutions for, like for dairy, grains, etc.).
For me, I personally probably will not be using this book to cook from much. I like it more for reading and educating myself with. (Again, I’m still coming from traditional habits that I actually like.)
I did attempt a recipe from this book, for blogging purposes.
SMOKY PEPPER AND WHITE BEAN QUESADILLAS
I chose this recipe because I personally love ALL quesadillas, and this one would only take 10 minutes! Well, prep alone (for me) took about 20 minutes and then cooking it and dishing it took a few more-but then I probably move slower than most.
As far as the ingredients went, the green onions, smoked paprika, roasted red peppers, lemon, parsley, and cherry tomatoes were no problem to obtain from my local store. What I DID end up having to substitute were the cooked white beans (SUBSTITUTED for red kidney beans), whole wheat or seeded tortillas (SUBSTITUTED Ezekial sprouted grain tortillas), and Manchego cheese (SUBSTITUTED sharp white cheddar cheese with hints of Parmesan).
The parsley that I bought at the store were truly a huge bunch but the packaging DID say that it was “technically” a bunch at 3oz. and so I used half of that bunch. It still seemed like an awful lot, but I trusted and proceeded anyway.
NOTE: the only parsley I could find for this recipe was the rougher “curly leaf” kind and not the Italian “flat leaf” kind. The recipe only called for …parsley.
So my taste tester and I found the recipe to be pretty good-he rated it at a 6, and I agreed. I LOVED the cheese I used and the beans seemed to make it a “meatier” kind of experience. The parsley was a bit rough, though.
This recipe was probably more trouble for me for the end result I got. Even if I had used a different or “softer” tortilla and less -or a different kind- of parsley, I’d still probably simplify this recipe, while in the back of my mind always remembering the initial recipe that inspired me! 😉
So to sum up my review of A Modern Way to Cook: the book is a beautiful read. It’s beautiful to look through and a GREAT cookbook to learn from-this coming from someone who is still used to cooking and eating the “old” way!
Thank you so much for reading my review of A Modern Way To Cook.
Available at Amazon.com
Authors Website: http://annajones.co.uk/
***I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.***
Mychols Fabulous Playground 