Review: “The Art Of Cooking With Vegetables”

Alain Passard’s “The Art of Cooking with Vegetables” is a cookbook for the cookbook lover.

This cookbook is pure art and showcases the raw talent Passard has that’s needed to maintain his three Michelin-starred restaurant L’Arpège in Paris.  In a day and age where everyone is dedicated to “food porn” and false representations of the food we eat, it’s refreshing to read a cookbook where the food is the actual star.  There are no photographs in this cookbook, only artfully created collages made by the chef himself.

Detail of “A Summer Mosaic of Green Vegetables”

The recipes themselves are simple (many have only 4-5 ingredients) yet leave you wanting more–  and Passard knows what he is doing, in 2001 he removed red meat from his restaurant and dedicated himself to cooking with vegetables.  The novice home cook will be inspired by the recipes for years to come and for the vegetarian cook this book is a must have.

On a side note, we’re confused by the bad reviews out there regarding the lack of photos.  A cookbook isn’t about the photos on the page next to the recipe, it’s about the recipes!  People tend to forget that the photos they see in cookbooks  were created in lab-like conditions, they’re as fake as can be.  Perhaps we should all take a page from Passard’s book and pay more attention to the ingredients themselves than on how they should look.

The verdict:

5 flames, a “Spectacular” rating.  This product is in a category of its own making and is as close to perfect as can be.

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