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Learn to COOK - The Artful Vegan: Fresh Flavors from the Millennium Restaurant
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List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $16.47
Your Save: $ 8.48 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Ten Speed Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5636
EAN: 9781580082075
ISBN: 1580082076
Label: Ten Speed Press
Manufacturer: Ten Speed Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: 2003-11
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Studio: Ten Speed Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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Anyone who says haute cuisine, big flavour and vegan cooking can't go together hasn't been to San Francisco's famed Millennium Restaurant. Now, Millennium chef Eric Tucker brings us another collection of his mind-blowing vegan fare in The Artful Vegan. Bringing the farmers' market to fine dining, these 140 new recipes are fresh, impassioned vegan interpretations of traditional and contemporary global cuisine - and they're nutritious, meat- and dairy-free, and all organic.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Baby, we can do it, take the time, do it right
Comment: There are two chefs who taught me how to cook by virtue of publishing the books that I learned from. The first is Madhur Jaffrey (World of the East Vegetarian Cooking--an outstanding, comprehensive book of recipes, methods, ingredients and their substitutions for beginners with a knack for flavors and the will to give it a try). The next is Eric Tucker, Head Chef of Millennium Restaurant in San Francisco (best restaurant I've ever had the pleasure of dining in) and author of two Millennium books including The Artful Vegan.
I have both of Eric Tucker's books (Artful, and The Millennium Cookbook), and I reference them both frequently, whether I want to put on a pull-out-all-the-stops fabulous dinner party or just want a little inspiration for interesting flavor combinations for tonight's dinner.
Complicated? Doesn't have to be:
First thing you'll want to know about these books is that other reviewers are right that these are not meant for whipping up quick meals at the end of a long day. That said, I have on countless occasions pulled out Eric's books for inspiration for a quick something-or-other to do with, say, butternut squash. Say I've baked a butternut squash ahead of time and have it sitting in the fridge waiting for me to do something with it at the end of one of these hard days. A quick flip to the index of Artful for "squash, butternut" sends me to pp. 130-131, where I see the interesting combination of garlic, lemons, tahini, onion, tomato, and mint (plus some other things that I don't feel like putting in). I decide to combine those ingreds with some nice wild mushrooms I have in the fridge, a little minced serrano chile, and a smidge of raw sugar melted and poured over the squash, and I come up with a darned yummy and easy meal.
The thing to remember is that cookbooks are suggestions, nothing more. They are launching pads. With The Artful Vegan, what you've got is a series of very interesting flavor combinations that should make you feel like a kid in the world's biggest sandbox--play Play PLAY with the flavors, play with the textures, use the bits that sound good to you, combine them with other bits that pique your curiosity, and learn from it. Some of your "experiments" might well suck--that's OK. A bunch of them will be exquisite. Artful gives you a very comprehensive bunch of ideas that take you--well, it definitely took me--to places I would not have thought to go on my own. Now I do think it, and this is why I say Eric Tucker is one of the chefs who taught me to cook by writing this excellent book.
Well, unless you want it to be complicated:
Using the recipes not as suggestions but as verbatim instructions will also have you singing with glee. This is where you should set aside a day of preparation ahead of time and then another day to do the cooking and assembling and serving. Really--plan for a Sunday eve meal that you start on Saturday morning (preferably with a visit to the local farmers' market). This is why I (and other reviewers) say the recipes are time-consuming. But if you love the subtle arts of cookery and fancy yourself brave enough to try new techniques and flavor/texture combinations, you are going to love this book, and you are going to have more fun in the kitchen and be more impressed with what you can make than ever before.
Ingredients and equipment:
It also helps immensely to live in a great place like the San Francisco Bay Area where access to all things gastronomic are readily available. Between the wide variety of our farmers' markets, international groceries, organic health food stores, and the great outdoors, any outstanding ingredients list is pretty well covered in the Bay Area. If you live in an area where there's not as much selection, you'll need to be creative about substitution ingredients. Fortunately, Eric's books are good about telling you what other (perhaps less "exotic") ingredients would work well, what pieces you could leave out of the recipe and still have something stellar, and so forth.
You don't need a lot of specialized kitchen equipment to make these recipes. One assumes a blender and/or food processor and a basic set of quality knives and cookware. But you don't need all those stupid tchotchkes that have one use only, are impossible to clean and care for, and cost you a month's salary. Exquisite cooking is not defined by the fussiness of one's gadgets. (In my experience, reliance on fussy gadgetry is inversely related to cooking skill).
Oh, those gorgeous photos!:
One last thing: not every recipe in this book has a photo of the finished dish, but many do. The photos are works of art in and of themselves--the book is a visual feast as well as a collection of ideas for your own gustatory feast. Plus, with instructions that can seem at first to be very complicated, it's helpful to look at the photo and say "Oh, that's what he means by that!"
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To sum up:
1) The other reviewers are right that these recipes can be very time-consuming and complicated. Sometimes you want that--satisfies the inner chef-artiste in all of us;
2) The recipes are easily adaptable to be a lot less time-consuming and complicated, and Eric Tucker provides a lot of guidance on how to adapt the recipes;
3) You don't need to be an expert with a bunch of ridiculously complicated kitchen equipment to make the food in this book. You just need a bit of an experimental attitude, good solid basic kitchen equipment, and the willingness to have fun with new flavors, textures, ingredients, and ideas;
4) This shouldn't, however, be your first cookbook. You will likely enjoy the book most if you already have some experience fiddling around in the kitchen and are familiar with the basic terminology ("blanching" almonds, for example. Not too complicated--and there's a Basics section, a Techniques section, and a Glossary section in the back to help you with this stuff);
5) The Artful Vegan, along w/ Eric's earlier The Millennium Cookbook, took my cooking to a new level. It's doable, it's absolutely worth doing, and it's a heck of a lot of fun!
¡Buen provecho!
Customer Rating:
Summary: WOW
Comment: This is the best vegetarian/vegan cookbook ever. I am a collector of cookbooks and it is always great to find one with new creative recipes and this one surpassed my expectations. I would not consider this book for beginner cooks the recipes are lengthy, not 30 minute meals. It also has in quite a few recipes hard to find or expensive ingredients. Although, if you are a creative cook or live near quality stores it shouldn't be too big of problem. When I bought this book, I bought another at the same time for my sister.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good luck - these aren't easy
Comment: Great inspiration in the recipes, but many of them have ingredients you'll have to work hard to find, or have more complicated processes involved (like smoking something) that simply make this book too difficult for the regular home cook. I got it as a gift and started looking through it excited to make some of the dishes, but then when I got to reading the ingredients in detail I started giving up and turning the next one. And then the next one, and the one after that. Halfway through I think I got maybe 2 or 3 things I'd be able to do without spending a fortune just to make one meal. We aren't in the restaurant business, the authors jobs should be to set up a recipe to be made at home. Even in the intro they say that they don't typically even write these things down, but just wing it through inspiration. From this it doesn't surprise me that some people say that some recipes just don't work.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Comment: This is one of the most expensive cookbooks I have (and I also have Millenium). I love cooking and will do whatever it takes to make great dishes. However, when the recipes don't turn out, it's not worth my time or effort. I have found this to be the case with Artful. Two recipes completely did not work, even though I followed the directions exactly.
I will try a few more and write an update if I come across some decent recipes, but I can't help but wonder if these were even tested.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Either know how or learn fast!
Comment: This is the book that answers all those redundant questions us vegans have to endure constantly! "So what do you eat? Don't you miss meat or cheeseburgers?" The general public has no idea how much money, effort and time THEY actually spend eating meat/dairy foods and/or how actually redundant THEIR diets really are. Not to mention the detriment to the health of not only their bodies, but our enviornment! I don't want to soap box here, but I see these same people make food such an occasion in every sence, but instead of shopping the farmers markets, hunting down the most exotic and freshest of produce... or hitting your local wholefoods market to experience a more fresh approach to groceries, I see these same people eating at every gas station, 7-11 or some curious looking stranger at a food cart! Either know or get passionate about knowing, it's going in your mouth, in your bloodstream and through every vital organ, intestine and exit pathway! Shouln't it be of the highest quality???
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