Asian Vegetables: From Long Beans to Lemongrass, A Simple Guide to Asian Produce Plus 50 Delicious, Easy Recipes Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This is a good guide to the produce you'll find in an Asian market, and it gives you a decent idea of what you can do with that bitter melon or mustard cabbage after you've brought it home. It's a good book -- but I can't work up my enthusiasm for it.
For one thing: even though the photography is attractive, it's not terribly useful. Presumably to both save money and to give a sense of size-and-scale, most of the vegetable photos have several items in the same picture (Chinese broccoli next to choy sum next to mustard cabbage), with little circles (TOO-little circles) indicating the item highlighted in the text. The veggie photos are also smaller than the recipe photos; personally, I'd rather a good hard look at a healthy bunch of greens than a full-page picture of Asian gumbo with mustard cabbage and chinese sausage (however appealing that recipe might be).
The information given is also... well, not quite minimal, but far from exhaustive. While the entry for Lotus root in Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini is two or three pages (plus recipes), there's really only 3 paragraphs devoted to it here. It's good information, mind you, just not that much of it.
But note that I do give the book 4 stars. If you're completely new to Asian cooking, then this inexpensive book may be helpful (and a fatter book would be overwhelming).

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For anyone who has ever been dazzled but daunted at the Asian market, here is an indispensable, easy-to-use guide to identifying, choosing, and preparing these wonderfully unusual vegetables. From Amaranth and Bok Choy to Lotus Root and Lemongrass, food editor and writer Sara Deseran describes clearly the exotic array of Asian produce now widely available, explaining everything you need to know to shop confidently. This lavishly photographed resource is rounded out with 50 contemporary recipes, from Edamame with Szechwan Pepper-Salt to Stir-fried Shrimp and Garlic Chives. Asian Vegetables takes the mystery out of these enticing ingredients and puts the flavor in for fabulously healthy and delicious meals.

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