PASTA E VERDURA - 140 Vegetable Sauces for Spaghetti, Fusilli, Rigatoni, and All Other Noodles - Jack Bishop
This cookbook has a copyright of 1996. I have no idea where I bought this cookbook. I have never cooked from this before.
I'm honestly not sure when I bought this book that I knew it was vegetarian. The book starts out with a chapter on Perfect Pasta, like how to buy pasta (interesting read if you think buying fresh pasta from your local chain grocery store is better than dried) and how to cook it properly, a chapter on things you should have in your pantry and a chapter on finding the right recipe (lists which recipes are for low fat sauces, dairy free sauces and quick sauces). This book does not teach you how to make your own pasta by the way.
The main chapters are organized alphabetically by vegetables (from Artichokes to Beets to Fava Beans to Radicchio to Zucchini). Each vegetable section has info on selection, storage, preparation and their use in sauces as well as recipes that use the vegetable. There is also a list of "related recipes" (if you are in the onion section, they will list a recipe that can be found in the Broccoli Rabe section that also uses onions).
Each recipe also lists the "Best Pasta Choice" which lists the type of pasta that would work best with the sauce recipe given. Recipes seem to be pretty straight forward and easy to follow. Most of the recipes seem to take under an hour to make and look pretty healthy. I think this would be a great book to have if you wanted to put healthy (though not necessarily diet), fairly quick pasta meals on the table after work.
The only problem I had with the book was the index. Though each recipe does tell you what the best pasta to use is, there is no pasta index. Meaning, if you were like me and wanted to look up the best sauces to go with a package of tortellini you had, you would have to look at each recipe, as the different types of pasta are not listed in the index.
As a side note, the name Jack Bishop didn't mean anything to me until I looked at the author photo in the back of the book...Jack Bishop is the guy on America's Test Kitchen that does the taste tests with Christopher Kimball.
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Posted by: Pasta recipes | March 06, 2008 at 02:39 AM