Learn to COOK - Melissa's Great Book of Produce: Everything You Need to Know about Fresh Fruits and Vegetables
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List Price: $29.95
Our Price: $19.77
Your Save: $ 10.18 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Wiley
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.34
EAN: 9780764571879
ISBN: 0764571877
Label: Wiley
Manufacturer: Wiley
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: 2006-02-27
Publisher: Wiley
Studio: Wiley
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Editorial Reviews:
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"It's not enough to know your jicama from your heirloom tomatoes these days. When it comes to fruits and vegetables, there's a whole new terrain and this book is your GPS. From dragon fruit to yuzu, this smart, savvy, handsomely illustrated guide tells you how to recognize it, buy it, prepare it, and cook it, with edgy recipes from all over the world."
--Steven Raichlen, author of The Barbecue! Bible and How to Grill
Chances are, you're tempted to venture beyond the standard fruits and vegetables when enticed by the array of fresh produce at your grocer's. But then you're stymied. Exactly what is that? Is it supposed to be eaten cooked or raw? Should it be firm or soft? Do you peel it? How do you get to the good stuff?
This guide gives you the answers. It tells you how to choose and use all kinds of produce and includes:
* More than 100 fruits and vegetables
* 200 gorgeous color photos and 100 delicious recipes
* The seasonal availability of each fruit and vegetable
* Information on how to select, store, eat, and cook each item
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: very helpful ... attractive format
Comment: This is perfect for someone who enjoys produce but doesn't really know much about it. I look-up the items on my shopping list before I go to the store and it yields a better selection for me. I will be ready for the large farmers markets soon!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Food writing delicious enough to eat with photos to match. A useful guide to boot!
Comment: From The Orange County Register/Fullerton News Tribune
October 5, 2006
by Judy Bart Kancigor, author of Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family
You're shopping for produce and spot this spiny magenta...what? Christmas ornament? You're curious, but what on earth is it? For a moment your hand hovers as you gauge your own adventurous spirit. But do you buy it soft or firm? peel it? cook it? eat it raw? So instead you buy plums. Again.
"The appearance of dragon fruit is downright surreal," writes Cathy Thomas, the Register's food editor and award-winning author of "Melissa's Great Book of Produce: Everything you need to know about fresh fruits and vegetables" (Wiley), a gloriously photographed, comprehensive guide down the produce aisles. With Thomas at the helm, each fruit, from Asian pear to yuzu, and each vegetable, from artichoke to yu choy sum, begs to be discovered, its perfume inhaled and, yes, tasted.
Dragon fruit "has eye-popping magenta skin, dotted with bright lime-green spines" and "tastes like a marriage between kiwi and pineapple," she promises. Indeed it does, as I discovered recently at a book signing and reception held in the gardens of the Long Beach Museum of Art. Robert Schueller, marketing guru for Melissa's World Variety Produce, Inc., the largest distributor of specialty produce and foods in the U.S., selected a dragon fruit from the exotic fruit buffet - a riot of color like an artist's palette - and cut into it to reveal its purplish-pink flesh.
So what do you do with it? Dice the flesh, says Thomas, and combine it with diced pineapple or mango, toss with mint or liqueur and serve in the spiny shells. Or cut into wedges and splash with fresh lime. Use dragon fruit purée in cakes or quick breads or fold into sweetened whipped cream.
Thomas and Melissa's have teamed up to take the guesswork out of buying, storing, preparing, using and serving 120 fruits and vegetables. Brilliant photos from the Register's Nick Koon and 100 mouth-watering recipes plus a glossary of gizmos make "Melissa's Great Book of Produce" a valuable resource for the home cook or seasoned professional.
But the icing on the cake (or, I should say, the crown on the pomegranate) is the prose. Unlike other produce guide writers one consults for mere information, Thomas, with her uncanny ability to capture sound, smell and taste, invites you on a shopping adventure. Take figs: "Fragile fig skin surrenders easily to reveal soft-textured flesh filled with a multitude of tiny seeds. A bite produces tiny seed-popping sounds, flesh saturated with honey flavor, and a moist flower-petal aroma." Go ahead. Pass up those luscious black missions. I dare ya'.
Each fruit and vegetable fairly leaps off the page. "I want people to be able to smell each one and taste it," she told me. "Should it give a little when you press your thumb or snap when you break it?"
Common varieties combine with the exotic, eliminating the intimidation factor. "Everybody knows common celery," said Thomas, "but what about Chinese celery? The leaves and stalk are limp. They're supposed to be. They're so aromatic and delicious. I love to see people use them in stir-fries and soup."
"I make it a point to try something different every time I shop," noted Nancy Eisman, Melissa's special projects director. Good idea! So as fall days turn crisp and the soup kettle beckons, why not try the sunflower choke (also called Jerusalem artichoke, sunchoke or girsole).
Cream of Sunflower Choke Soup
From "Melissa's Great Book of Produce" by Cathy Thomas
1 1/2 pounds sunflower chokes, peeled, cut in 1-inch-thick slices
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups chicken broth, sodium-reduced preferred, or vegetable broth
Salt and white pepper to taste
3 tablespoons minced Italian parsley
Optional: croutons
1. Place sunflower chokes, milk, and broth in nonreactive, large saucepan. Simmer, partially covered, about 12-14 minutes. Remove 1/2 cup liquid.
2. Puree in batches in food processor or blender, using caution because ingredients are hot. Add reserved liquid if soup is too thick. Taste and add salt and generous amount of pepper. Ladle into 4 soup bowls. Top with parsley and croutons, if desired. Serves 4
Customer Rating:
Summary: Geeky book for Produce Lovers
Comment: A geek in one thing, a geek in all things, I guess and here is a book for all the gardening and food geeks out there. I came acorss those book while trolling the sorting shelves at my local library. It is one of the best finds I have made in a while.
Melissa's Great Book of Produce: Everything you need to know about fresh fruits and vegetables is a information-filled and gorgeously photographed tome on produce both familiar and strange. For each piece of produce you get information on buying, storage use and even a few recipes along the way. There are some items in here I have never heard of before and it is great to get information on those I have heard of, but never encountered.
A wonderful book for the kitchen or the couch, Melissa's Great Book of Produce will surely expand your knowledge and, most likely, your appetite.
Highly Recommended
Customer Rating:
Summary: Melissa's
Comment: This book has tons of information! I work in an upscale grocery store where we carry a lot of the product that is in this book. I can read up on a particular product and know when it is available, how to pick out good product and even find a recipe or two. Thanks!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Well designed, beautiful book, not to mention extremely informative
Comment: Visually, this book is impeccable. The food stylist, graphic designer, and photographer have done a fantastic job of showing the fruits and vegetables in an appealing and stimulating way, sliced and angled just so. The typography and look of the book is probably one of the nicest on my shelves. But it's not just a good coffee table book. Most importantly, it contains enough detailed information on a quite impressive range of fruits and vegetables that it has quickly become my favorite reference book for fruits and vegetables. I can't say enough how thoroughly enjoyable the book is to look at and learn from. And my favorite part is when the author describes how a particular item tastes: for example, a feijoa has a "sweet-tart taste blending pineapple, citrus and purple grapes." The next day I hunted down a feijoa and enjoyed that sweet-tart taste! I have since personally vowed to try every fruit and vegetable in the book that I haven't yet eaten. It may be a challenge to find them all, but of course, as the book implies in its title, melissas.com is one place I can look for them.
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