Root-to-Stalk Cooking: The Art of Using the Whole Vegetable [A Cookbook]

I've always been appalled by the amount of vegetable waste that goes into my compost heap or to feed the neighborhood chickens. With this book I can go beyond the Radish green furiake, and trying to get people to try green radish pods, use everything once at least for stock etc. Leafed the the book and found tonight's meatless Monday recipe in a cauliflower and smoked paprika sauce, have started saurkraught in a jar and am ready to play with the herb salt recipes as well as the celery and carrot leaf stuff.If you garden, use a CSA or shop the farmer's markets, you owe it to yourself to pick this book up and use it to buy something you've never tried before.

Better than I expected it to be. Very useful.

Pros: Great color photos, nice typography, some tasty recipes, feels like an expensive print publication (giftable).Cons: Poor organization, i.e. needs to be better compiled based on the part of the plant. For example, a bold or highlight of the unusual plant part in the ingredient list would be helpful. After all, if you buy this book you're not looking to just get a good collection of recipes, you're buying it because you have some plant parts you want to use and want to easily find recipes that utilize them. That said, there are several redundant recipes with unsurprising parts of the vegetable/fruit. I was expecting recipes for ONLY unusual and unpredictable parts of the plant, but about 50% of the recipes and the techniques are relatively well-known.

So many times you don't know what to do with roots, leaves and other things you think the only thing you can make is soup with. This book is really helpful to use all of the product.

Perfect!

No more wasted veggies. This book teaches how to use the whole vegetable tops and all. I recomend this book.

I usually don't sit down and read a cookbook, but this one I did. It was so well written and the concept is very timely as Americans are on a quest for more vegetables in their diet. The photography, the recipes, the design of the book and the writing are all excellent.

Everyone can make a good entrée but too often the sides/ vegetables are an after thought. Even when veggies are given the respect they deserve we often use only the parts we are familiar with. This book gives ways to use the whole plant. An eco way to enjoy good tasting food.

Disappointing. I was hoping for recipes to use the bits that normally get thrown away, as the title suggests, but it really isn't that. Cauliflower steaks with mustard glaze? That's a cauliflower. People often cook that. At least that one is simple- how about romaine wraps with brown rice and bulgogi? A complicated recipe centred around marinaded and grilled steak, rice and nori sheets. The romaine lettuce leaves are used to wrap it all up so that it can all go in the mouth together. But in reality you could eat it without- the lettuce leaves are certainly not centre-stage here. Besides, don't people normally eat romaine lettuce leaves? Why else would they buy it? The fattoush salad uses nothing that isn't normally in a fattoush salad- in fact there is a multitude of recipes which defy the finding of anything which might normally be destined for the compost heap. I thought the book might offer creative ways to embrace no-waste cooking, but in truth the most creative thing here is vegetable stock, and you don't need to buy a whole book for that.