Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook [A Cookbook]

Another hit from Joe Yonan! I am an omnivore looking to add some interest to my already veg-heavy diet. A particular wish of mine is to make more cooked veggie items for lunches instead of buying expensive takeaway salads. This book is perfect for that.If you do want meat, it is easy to add to many of the recipes (a few slices of bacon alongside the sweet potato, greens and kimchi hash for example). Unlike other vegetarian recipe collections, Eat Your Vegetables emphasizes just that - vegetables. While soy products make an appearance, Joe avoids commercially-made meat substitutes. Other proteins include eggs and cheese, which in many cases are easily omitted if you're vegan or simply don't like them. Joe also includes other suggestions to help out vegans (such as substituting miso for oyster and/or fish sauce).Even more than in Serve Yourself, a great many of the recipes become components of other dishes and there are usually several options, e.g., for that big pot of tomato sauce you just made (I think it goes into as many as five other recipes, and of course you can use it on any pasta). As a result, my cooking sessions from this book have involved making several things for use in different ways throughout the week (hearty greens gave me a side to go with some sausage I already had, plus went into hash and the remainder in the freezer for the cheesy greens gratin and a few other things). Joe also continues the theme of how to use up or save leftovers and extras, which is extremely helpful if you're only cooking for one or two people but are stuck with grocery store bundles and packages designed for more.It is also easy to double the recipes if, like me, you like to have leftovers handy for multiple meals or want to make a meal for two. As with Serve Yourself, I find that doubling the recipes gives me three and sometimes four small-moderate portions.You will find new versions of "Classic Joe" dishes here, such as roasted sweet potatoes with various toppings - great for me as I love both recipes from Serve Yourself, additional riffs on kimchi, use of Asian and Southwestern US flavors/dishes and a wealth of interesting sandwiches (and I say this last as a non-sandwich person. Joe's sandwiches are always good). There is a lot brand new here as well, given the veggie focus, such as the savory tart ideas, nut butter and dried fruit sandwiches and additional desserts.Finally, perhaps the thing I appreciate most about both of Joe's books is that he is the real deal (culinary school graduate, professional food writer) and I think that is why so many of his recipes turn out, for me anyway, to be the best version of whatever it is that I have cooked (hearty greens and tomato sauce with a kick being two examples from Eat Your Vegetables). While I have enjoyed recipes and cookbooks by others without that pedigree, I personally have found more "duds" among those collections and none among the many I have made from Joe's books. Similarly, unlike other "cooking for one" books, Joe's recipes are modern and innovative, even when they hearken back to American classic comfort food. Others in the genre seem to focus on scaling down, whereas Joe has really created an entirely new model (and yes, there are some politics around that BUT -- easy to disregard or, like me, you may devour the essays too, nodding all the while).

The idea of a book for one vegan/vegetarian should be praised! Although I need recipes for 2, I can just as easily multiply by 2 as divide by 2. However, the first thing I tried from this book was almost inedible! It was the Szechuan tofu and shiitake mushroom stir-fry. It called for 2 ingredients I could only find on Amazon—the Szechuan pepper flakes and the Chile bean paste. However, I wanted to follow the recipe so I waited until they arrived. But the recipe had the kind of error that makes my blood boil! It called for careful preparation of the peppercorns and then never said when to add them to the recipe! I just threw them in at the end. (I made the mistake of doubling the spices, though, which Joe warned not to do in the introduction.) But the end result was way too salty and spicy! Even though I added extra sugar, there was a definite lack of sweetness. It was just HOT and bitter. My husband and I agreed that it needed vegetables (as in Eat Your Vegetables!). Carrots, celery, cabbage, peas—any or all of these would have been welcome and would have added sweetness and texture. Did Joe ever taste this recipe? I don’t think I will have the nerve to try another one.

I've been cooking for twenty years, and I've been a vegetarian for one year. I found the recipes either very basic, or not original. Most of the fancier, main dishes seem to be variations of recipes from well-known chefs like Rich Landeau (see his book, "Vedge"), or Yotam Ottolenghi (check out his books "Plenty" and "Plenty More"). These recipes are more time-intensive and involve more exotic ingredients, and if I have the time to try out recipes like that, I'll go to those cookbooks first.This cookbook is well-meaning, and the recipes probably taste great. It might suit the beginner to intermediate cook who has the time and energy to hunt out the ingredients, and make a lot of sauces and condiments for each recipe, but it's not for me. I was looking for simple, unfussy, new ways to prepare and serve vegetarian meals after a busy day at work. I have found more ideas online just by googling, reading different blogs, and experimenting. In fact, it's the reason for my new policy: check out any cookbook I am thinking of buying beforehand, either at a bricks and mortar bookstore, or my local public library!

Of all the cookbooks that I own, I probably have used Barbara Swain's "Cooking for 1 or 2" the most -- And given the fact that it was published in 1978, you can imagine what it looks like -- I've had to employ duck tape to hold it together. The problem was that the recipes reflect the tastes of...1978: i.e. very few veg, lots of high fat. But I've never been able to find a quality cookbook that cuts down the number of servings automatically. Mathematical error are likely when calculating a 6-serving recipe for 1 or 2...and even if I get the calculations right, often the recipe just tastes "off".Eat Your Vegetables fills in that "1 or 2 servings" gap, plus the recipes I've tried so far are absolutely delicious, as is the food photography (should be a prerequisite for all cookbooks...)! I read Mr. Yonan's column in the Washington Post weekly, and have cut out a number of his recipes, so his coming out with this book was icing on the cake, as it were. Looking forward to trying more of them...

Great recipes for vegetarian dishes. Handy for single serve meals. New take on old recipes. Whipped ricotta makes a great dip and pomegranate molasses changed the taste of eggplants. But on the whole its not the best cook book on vegetarian dishes that I have read so far. That honour is reserved for Yotam Ottolenghi's seminal work titled Plenty.

Really enjoyed the philosophy for this book. Cooking is an art and this book really does it justice. Not necessarily a vegetarian cookbook; just a book about treating vegetables with respect and creative ways to bring them to the fore-front. Variety of recipes also well-balanced too with respect to ease of preparation and cooking methods. Divided into Salads and dressings, sandwiches and soups, baking, broiling and roasting, stovetop, sweets, entertaining and "for the pantry" sections.

This book has a lot of good recipes, however the marjority of them contain cheeses, butter, and white flour. Of course everything is vegetarian, but if you are trying to be health conscious you may want to look for something else.