When I picked this book, my agenda was to broaden my repertoire of working with the kind of vegetables which I don’t make often into my recipes. “Eating from Ground up” is exactly what I expected and more. It celebrates these vegetables and showcases its unique flavors with some light touches, smart techniques and simple recipes, making the vegetable shine and showcased, instead of becoming just an ingredient in a recipe.
The author Alana Chernila has written this book in a simple narrative tone, making one feel she is conversing with us while we are cooking her recipes. The book has around 100 recipes divided into sections – Barely Recipes which are simple ways of bring out the flavors in the vegetables; A Pot of Soup has nourishing soups for spring, summer, fall or winter; Too hot to cook has recipes of summer vegetables; Warmth and comfort has comfort foods for fall and winter; and Celebration and other excuses to eat with hands has recipes of appetizers and desserts to party with…
To perfectly review a recipe book, one has to cook its recipes. This is what we do at our Cook Book Club in Austin. Each of us picked multiple recipes and tried and tested them and brought together all the recipes to taste test it and enjoy together. There are some recipes which we will make again and again, some which we found we could improve on, and some which we thought a variation would improve it! But this book surely helped all of us celebrate and appreciate each vegetable in its own essence.
Barely Recipes:
Roasted Beets, Julia Style: Apparently this was Julia Child’s recommendation for the only way to cook a beet. All these years I have cooked beets by boiling them but I figured the flavor of beets is more accentuated by roasting then in the oven with olive oil, salt and balsamic vinegar. Even while I write this recipe, I am nibbling on the left over beets and totally enjoying them as my healthy snack.
Hot Sesame Celery and Ruby Cabbage: When eating this dish, my friend another cookbook club member said she had only used red cabbage in salads before and was very happy how this simple red cabbage recipe could be adopted as a vegetable side dish.
Perfect Roasted Cauliflower:
Pickled Carrots:
A Pot of Soup:
Kale and White Bean Soup with Rosemary oil
Butternut Red Lentil Dal:
Too Hot to Cook:
Beet and Cucumber Quinoa: This was a delicious salad and my friend who makes Quinoa often said she picked red quinoa first time to pair with red beets and this combination of the nuttier quinoa with the roasted beets was so perfect.
Swiss Chard Stem, Fennel and Salmon Rice: As against how simple the author makes this dish sound, the recipe turned up an exotic entrée with salmon, fennel and dill flavors.
Caprese
:
Warmth and Comfort
Shredded Brussels with Crispy Shallots: We had two versions of this dish, one version followed the recipe to the T and the other one was with an addition of a sriracha, honey, lemon dressing which brought together the ingredients and accentuated the taste. Though the shredded Brussels sprouts in both forms were crunchy green and enjoyable.
Roasted Vegetable and Cashew Curry:
Any curry with coconut milk base is very exotic, and so is this. This curry involved roasting the cauliflowers and carrots and then adding them to the seasoned curry base made of onions, coconut milk, with spinach, and cashews. The curry was good but since I personally eat spicy food, I found the need to add a good amount of red chilli powder to make it perfect for my requirements.
Cauliflower Cheese:
Celebrations and other excuses to eat with hands:
Cauliflower Hot Wings with Blue Cheese Dressing:
Pissaladiere: Loved this pizza with anchovies and olives on a bed of caramelized onions
Caramelized onion dip: enjoyed this healthy dip with out any inhibitions.
Cucumber Pops: I am looking forward to the summer with this healthy Popsicle recipe in hand. With the freshness of cucumber and cooling powers of yogurt in one pop to enjoy on a hot summer afternoon. I might even just serve it like a cucumber yogurt lassi/ cucumber buttermilk shake 😉
Butternut squash custard with maple glazed pecans:
Carrot Celebration Cake: I love Gajar ka Halwa and when the author said this celebration cake recipe is inspired from this Indian dessert and even made with Ghee, I was craving to eat it. My friend in the cookbook club, who loves taking up baking challenges made this and came up with few hurdles along the way. The cake was quite dense like a fruit cake and baking with ghee is not easy as butter. And the biggest difference was the recipe said bake for 20 to 25 minutes and she said the cake took thrice the amount of time, while she was going back and forth to the oven afraid to burn it since it was beyond what the recipe suggested! She had a plan of making it into cake pops next time instead of cake since this was quite a dense cake and that’s a brilliant variation
.
As you can see we had a ball testing out so many recipes and were happy with our plates of healthy and delicious lunch.
Thanks to the publishers and Blogging for Books for this recipe book. It made me and the cookbook club members venture in to working with the not so common vegetables in our culinary adventures.
