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Summary: My Most Used Cook Book Ever
Review: while this book may be labor intensive at times, there are many recipies that do just whip right up. you don't have to buy their $200.00 dehydrator... wal-mart has one for $40 bucks. Juliano constanltly encourages you to get comfortable with the 'raw method' and then get creative in your own style which after sticking with it i seemed to get it and start my own versions.
http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan ...click on the tabs to the left and it just magically makes giving up all meat and dairy a breeze.
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Summary: Eating raw vegetables CAN BE a gourmet experience!
Review: This book is amazing! Juliano has found a way to make eating raw vegetables into a gourmet experience and he is sharing it with the rest of us! Having hit our mid thirties, my husband and I have made a pact to eat healthier! We have found this to be easier said that done for us. Coming from a typical meat and potatoes up bringing, giving up our comfort foods as been a huge challenge. We know what we should be eating...but finding a way to make it palatable, for the both of us, has been difficult...and forget about going out to eat! If you are lucky you might find a salad or some steamed veggies. Over the weekend, we discovered Juliano's Raw restaurant in Santa Monica...it was truly awe-inspiring for us both! This was the first time since we started eating better that my husband did not make some comment about turning into a rabbit! He even loved the dairy substitutions. The majority of our meal was spent commenting on almost every bite! So, we bought the un-cookbook before we left! Most of the dishes they serve at the restaurant are in the book in addition to many more. I have read quite a few comments about how time consuming the some of recipes are or how that they are not as healthy as one might think...The book does not claim that the dishes are "fast food" nor does it claim to be an authority on health or nutrition. It is what it is, a book of creative vegan recipes that are made with raw foods, in order to retain the maximum amount of the foods nutritional value. While neither one of us is intending to turn vegan (at this point) the flavor and creativity of the recipes in this book will certainly help us develop better eating habits without feeling like we are missing our old unhealthy foods.
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Summary: Way too hard for anyone who isn't already seriouslycommitted
Review: ...and Juliano is unappetizingly creepy.
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Summary: nasty
Review: I've tried several recipes in this book (equisite marinara w/ zucchini strips, mashed potatoes, gravy) and they tasted awful! I've been raw for a few months now and from this book I've learned that SIMPLE is always better. Juliano's dishes call for dozens of raw ingredients blended together and the outcome makes one gag. You end up wasting beautiful ingredients that would be fine on their own by blending them all together. I have to say that the pictures of the food with edible flowers are gorgeous, but the outcome of the recipes doesn't taste gorgeous. Avoid wasting your money on this book and wasting your money by destroying perfectly adequate fruits and vegetables by putting them into these recipes.
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Summary: One of the great culinary geniuses of our time
Review: Juliano is a genius! If you can forget the health benefits, and environmental benefits and the spiritual benefits of this cuisine, and that is a tall order because they are substantial, the flavors and textures will knock your socks off! I do not eat raw foods all the time, but I have been eating more of them since reading this book. I have been a vegetarian for nearly 30 years and there are recipes, like his Mac Cream, that simulate riccotta not just in flavor, and texture, but in the bodies response to the food. He manages to elicite pleasure, delight, and energy with his cuisine. It works like comfort food without the health consequences of most of that. Also, I don't understand why people say it takes longer. Most of it is done with a knife and a blender. In my experience it takes way less time than cooking a regular meal. There are a few things that are dehydrated. But just like marinating, those don't take your time, just a delta time before you can eat it. It needs a little forethought. There is plenty that doesn't use the dehydrator though. I have been using a peeler to get fine ribbon like shreds of veggies ever since I saw his "pasta". This book is right up there with Escoffier as far as I am concerned, but it is for our age where have to take more measures to care for our health.
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Summary: Not for the time crunched
Review: The photographs in the book are beautiful, but I found the instructions to be vague at times. (I had to refer to a different book on exactly how to sprout buckwheat groats.) The recipes require either a lot of preparation time, or a lot of ingredients. A few require both. All grains are to be sprouted, which requires 3-10 days for the grains to be ready. A lot of the "cooking" is done in a dehydrator which can take several hours to a day for the food to be ready. I suppose if you could plan far enough ahead, then it wouldn't be so bad, but the initial start-up put me off trying a lot of the recipes.
Rating: 
Summary: Raw Preparations Brasserie Style
Review: I embarked on a review of this book to get a different perspective on the raw food techniques presented by the very well known Charlie Trotter and his co-author Roxanne Klein in the new book entitled simply 'Raw'. I was skeptical that Trotter's book approached the subject in a way which would encourage anyone to try this food if they were not already devoted to the doctrine. This older book goes a long way toward making this cuisine a lot more practical and interesting to the ordinary foodie and certainly more accessible to the Vegans to whom this approach will be attractive. The raw food movement actually goes at least one step beyond the vegan doctrine in that it excludes any foodstuffs which have been processed at a temperature of 120 degrees Fahrenheit or above. By extension, it excludes any foodstuffs which can only be made palatable by heating to this temperature. This excludes virtually all conventional baking. By coincidence, it also excludes virtually all white starchy foods such as potatoes, white rice, and pasta. This immediately makes the cuisine more attractive as a resource for those people who have a strong inclination to reducing carbohydrates. Juliano Brotman's book is accessible to more people because it eliminates one barrier placed by Trotter's book in that it uses very few unusual fresh ingredients. It's list of special materials should certainly be much more accessible to anyone living in or near a large city or near a good health food store. As always, non-perishable special items are availible to anyone within reach of an Internet connection. Juliano's book goes an extra step by supplying substitute methods for techniques which are best done by a juicer or a dehydrator. As long as one has a good blender and an oven which can sustain a temperature close to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, you can do most of the recipes in this book. More recipes are accessible if materials processed by a juicer can be bought from a local health food store. The book does not remove the perception that this cuisine involves a lot of prep work and a lot of prep work for intermediate pantry items. The list of ingredients, most involving some kind of knive work, blending, or grinding, is imposing. It is a testament to modern fresh produce distribution methods that it is practical to maintain this kind of cuisine outside of California. Even so, the number of different fresh ingredients with different seasons can make some of the recipes pretty expensive, if even possible in less urban parts of the country. But, there is no question that this book makes this very extreme form of cuisine more acessible to a larger number of people than does the Charlie Trotter book. I would still warn people on the outside looking in that this cuisine involves a major commitment of time. One unespected requirement of this cuisine is that prep time is often much longer than for conventional methods. At the heart of this issue is processes using a dehydrator (or an oven in place of a dehydrator). These techniques look a whole lot like baking or roasting, but at a low temperature for a much longer time. A second major time commitment comes from soaking and sprouting nuts and seeds. These processes, very commonly used in recipes, take from four (4) hours to five (5) days. And after this, you don't even get bread! Just kidding. There is no doubt that many processes in conventional cuisine do take a long time. The most common is the baking of artisinal breads. But, little of the day to day cooking most people do require much more than two hours to prep and cook. I will not question the premises behind the raw food doctrine, as I am not qualified to evaluate it's claims to being a more healthy way to eat. I will only offer the observation that the doctrine appears to involve a lot of spirituality and I cannot but believe there is a certain placebo effect taking place. I also believe people commited to this cuisine are eating fewer harmful materials and many of the foods they eat are certifiably good for most people. I'm also sure it is a good way to stay thin. There are some suggestions and objections I have about the book, but none detract from the book's overall worth. First, I am very surprised the book uses just 'olive oil' as an ingredient instead of 'extra virgin olive oil'. There is a danger that a reader may take this as a license to pick just any olive oil product, some of which may have included a considerable amount of heat to extract the last bits of oil from the olives after all the easy oil has been obtained by cold pressing. Second, I always object to long pantry item suggestions, and this book's pantry suggestions appear to have a lot more problems than most, as it includes a large number of perishable commodities such as cilantro,parsley, romaine, basil, mushrooms, tomatoes, avocados, and dates. My philosophy with pantry items is to never buy anything unless I plan to use it as an ingredient within the next day for perishables and the next week for durable foodstufs. Third, I object to a few of the more polemical (and plainly false) statements such as the clain that we replace water cooked out of foods by dirty tap water. The overall quality of the bood does not deserve this. This is RAW brasserie to Charlie Trotter's RAW haute cuisine. Cheaper, and more accessible.
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Summary: Delicious, but not easy
Review: I truly love this (un)cookbook. I am new to the whole raw food thing and Juliano's lucious recipes made a believer out of me. I can recommend this book whole-heartedly...but there are some things to consider before you buy it. First, you need to have several small appliances to be able to do most of the recipes as described. You'll need a juicer (preferably a Champion, according to Juliano), a powerful food processor, a blender, a dehydrator, and if you have any money or desire left, a coffee grinder. Secondly, a lot these recipes aren't ones that you can whip up at a moments' notice. Nuts, seeds and grains need soaking time and sprouting time. And while things get a whole lot easier when you start the recipes a head of time, you'll still be spending a good bit of time in the kitchen combining stuff. Thirdly, this is not a low fat diet. All the fats do come from vegetables and nuts, which contain the 'good' fat we're all looking for, but still, it's something to be aware of. Even with these qualifications, I still think this is a great addition to any cookbook collection. And though I just can't seem to get some of the recipes right (my Mango Essene bread was just plain gross) I am truly glad I got this book because of the way it reintroduced me to eating the earth's offerings.
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Summary: Good Ideas, But That's It
Review: Having been a vegetarian for five years, I was immediately drawn to the concept of a raw food diet. Also, because I am very much the bookworm, I assumed that I should buy some books on the subject. The only book available at my bookstore on raw foods was this one. I looked at it a few times before deciding to buy it. For the most part, RAW: The UNcook book is completely recipes. For the beginning raw foodist, it offers very little information on the lifestyle, its benefits, and its challenges. If I had not been fortunate enough to discover a wealth of information online, I would have been lost by depending on this book as a resource of information. In addition to this, many of the book's recipes, if not all, are flawed. A recipe for flax seed cookies, for instance, says that it makes just 12 cookies. I used half the amount of apples called for and ended up with almost three dozen. Either the measurements need to be revised or more cooking directions need to be provided. The book itself is rather expensive, making it even more of a disappointment given the fact that almost all of the recipes need to be "experimented with" in order to come out correctly. If anything, Juliano's book is great for ideas. Substituting peeled zucchini for pasta is a wonderful idea, as is using nuts and seeds to make flour, but I would definitely suggest finding a better resource for those just beginning a raw foods diet.
Rating:
Summary: Very wild...
Review: Juliano is THE MAN... This book really reflects many unique and creative ideas in the area of RAW cooking. Very healthy, delicious and impressive...
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