Rating: 
Summary: Bishop is a God-send!
Review: There has been a great upheavel in the human diet over the past decade. More and more people are going vegeterian or vegan, and the trend has been garnering more and more attention from the media. I've been more healthy and happy than ever since giving up meat a year ago. Thankfully, with Bishop's "Complete Italian Vegeterian Cookbook", the transition to meat-less eating isn't as disorienting to newcomers, or even to those who eat meat but still love a good grilled veggie repast with angel hair pasta, chopped nuts, and double-chocolate biscotti (and if that whets your appetite, hang onto your hats, folks, 'cause we've just got started!).Some vegeterians or vegeterian hopefuls are concerned that you can't put 'vegeterian' and 'Italian' in the same sentence; Italian cuisine is famous for its meatballs and prosciutti after all. Bishop, however, proves them wrong. Just try the seared-chard polenta (pictured on the cover ... I made it in just under 45 minutes and it was DELICIOUS and soooo filling. One bowl filled me up and there's still plenty left for dinner and the rest of the family). The directions are easy, and before each chapter there's a main index for each recipe, nicely organized depending on whether you want a hot focaccia pizza or a cold grilled eggplant and sage sandwich. Vegans, take note: there are recipes containing cheese and other dairy, but many items are vegan-friendly and dairy items are easily substituted. There are also color photos and, of course, a dessert section that has what must be the best peach galetto and chocolate-almond biscotti seen in or outside of Italy. It doesn't get any better than this. Even if you're not vegeterian, this book is a definite keeper.
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Summary: Delicious, "doable", truly authentic Italian!
Review: This book is wonderfully full of Italian vegetarian recipes that I can imagine home cooks in Italy use. I love the "realness" of the recipes. The text is clear and the recipe instructions are given in easy to follow steps. Most recipes are simple and do not contain a myriad of hard to find ingredients. It is also a find for the cook looking to keep fat to a minimum. I just can't say enough good things about this book. I also recommend Jack Bishop's "Pasta e Verdura". If you are looking for more "authentic" Italian vegetable cooking check out Faith Willinger's "Red, White & Greens".
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Summary: now my favorite cookbook
Review: This is a simply marvelous cookbook -- the first one I reach for when planning a meal, from a simple salad to a celebratory dinner party. Although I still love to browse my dozens of other cookbooks, this is the one I most often end up cooking from. I have never been so pleased by so many recipes from a single cookbook, and each recipe is so very much more than the sum of its parts: I am often amazed at how flavorful and unusual these easy, simple, low-fat dishes are. An especially great book for people who would like to eat more vegetables and less meat. Bravo!
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Summary: Great Also for Non-"Vegetarians"!
Review: This is a terrific book. I cannot say enough great things about it. I originally purchased it from a store bookshelf after comparing it to many other Italian cookbooks a few years ago. I've since bought copies for relatives who love it too. By the way, none of us are vegetarians.
My first favorite thing about it is that it can be read like a book, because it has wonderful intros to each of the sections and interesting notes about each recipe. I learned alot about Italian cooking and a deeper appreciation for the amazing creation of vegetables and how to celebrate them! Jack Bishop's attitude reminds me of my Dad's who is also of Italian heritage and loved to cook too.
Jack Bishop's complete step-by-step instructions and chapter set up provide the cook with a freedom to improvise and change ingredients with confidence; to go off and make a creation of their own from his "basic" recipe. Yet, he also provides specific recipes, so if you're not in the mood to be creative, you have full recipes to pick from also. It's far more than just an accumulation of recipes here. I wish every cookbook was set up this way! I learned so much from this book!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Great Also for Non-"Vegetarians"!
Review: This is a terrific book. I cannot say enough great things about it. I originally purchased it from a store bookshelf after comparing it to many other Italian cookbooks a few years ago. I've since bought copies for relatives who love it too. By the way, none of us are vegetarians.
My first favorite thing about it is that it can be read like a book, because it has wonderful intros to each of the sections and interesting notes about each recipe. I learned alot about Italian cooking and a deeper appreciation for the amazing creation of vegetables and how to celebrate them! Jack Bishop's attitude reminds me of my Dad's who is also of Italian heritage and loved to cook too.
Jack Bishop's complete step-by-step instructions and chapter set up provide the cook with a freedom to improvise and change ingredients with confidence; to go off and make a creation of their own from his "basic" recipe. Yet, he also provides specific recipes, so if you're not in the mood to be creative, you have full recipes to pick from also. It's far more than just an accumulation of recipes here. I wish every cookbook was set up this way! I learned so much from this book!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for no meat Italian. Highly Recommended
Review: `The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook' by Jack Bishop is the third of Mr. Bishop's vegetable cookbooks I have reviewed and I have adopted the two earlier reviewed books as part of my regular `go to' cookbooks when I am looking for a recipe. This volume will join the others, as its recipes are excellent and its organization make it an excellent source for finding meatless dishes with an Italian accent.
However, some of the expectations created for this book by its title and dust jacket blurbs are just a bit misleading.
The term `vegetarian' in the title is probably being used in only its most liberal sense. While there is not a trace of chicken, ham, hare, or halibut in these recipes, the recipes positively drip with eggs and cheese. This is no more `vegetarian' than the collection of recipes taken from Marcella Hazan's works with all animal products removed. This also means that the gushy compliments from `Cooks Illustrated' colleague Christopher Kimball which describe the book as `a quantum leap forward in vegetarian cooking' is really going too far. Since something coming close to this book could have been produced by simply editing the works of a major writer on Italian food, this book does not give us a whole lot more than what we already have with our library full of works from Hazan, Bastianich, and Bugialli, not to mention the dozen volumes on specific Italian regional cuisines. It is also a mistake to assume that the calorie count for these recipes will be lower than normal. The recipes are really faithful to Italian cuisine in their heavy use of either olive oil or butter, so you may need to read the recipes carefully if you are looking for low fat recipes. Speaking of butter and olive oil, I did find a minor misstatement about these ingredients. In the recipe for a low fat bechamel, he states that substituting butter for olive oil will reduce the fat in a recipe. The error is that a tablespoon of olive oil is 100% fat while a tablespoon of American unsalted butter is about 80% fat by law. While olive oil may be a healthier, mono-unsaturated fat, gram for gram, it has more fat calories than butter. And, you may be loosing some emulsifying properties of butter if you substitute olive oil for butter. This has no reflection on the quality of Mr. Bishop's recipes. If you can afford the fat calories, go for whatever turns you on.
But, there is a lot of value in this book. If you are a vegetarian who eats eggs and milk products, and you like Italian food, then you simply cannot find a better cookbook for your lifestyle. This is especially true since the Italian cuisines have done an especially good job of creating a really broad range of vegetable dishes. The `complete' in the title may be a stretch, as I simply refuse to believe that a complete cookbook is possible for any cooking subject as big as Italian cooking, even Italian cooking which excludes fish, fowl, meat, and game. But, this book gives the objective an honest treatment.
One's first impression upon looking at the Table of Contents is that there are a lot of subjects which do not sound like vegetable dishes, such as pastas, breads, risottos, polenta, frittatas (Italian omelets), Crespelle (Italian crepes), and desserts. This is all part of the complete treatment to which Bishop strives. And, although I recommend you run to Hazan or Bastianich or Batalli if you want good instructions on making fresh pasta and to Reinhart or Beranbaum or Ortiz or Field if you want to make Italian bread, Bishop has a lot of sound ideas about making some classic Italian preparations such as polenta and risotto.
The thing I liked best about this book aside were the large number of egg, gnocchi, risotto, and panini recipes plus the very nice collection of salads and vegetable side dishes. (One symptom of the mistaken `complete' in the title is that the book does not include a recipe for a Caprese salad (basil, mozzarella, and tomato)). While I have close to a hundred books loaded with recipes for fresh and dried pastas, there are few good collections which include Crespelle or as big a selection of frittatas. And, the selections of meatless sandwich recipes (Panini) are a real find.
This may seem like a small thing, but I also give Mr. Bishop and his publisher high marks for the book's layout, with each recipe typically taking a single page. I am also very fond of his recipe for a vegetable stock, as it reduces the simmer time to a very convenient hour by chopping the vegetables rather than by simply halving them and simmering for three or more hours. The other pantry recipes are similarly first rate, although I think I would replace his quick sauce with my favorite basic sauce from Mario Batali that is sweetened with carrot and leaves out the parsley or basil.
I have mixed feelings about the photographs in this book. They are well done, but for a 550 page book costing over $37, the number is a bit thin and the placement in a single rotogravure section is more typical of less expensive volumes.
If you want meatless Italian recipes, this is the book for you. At the very least, it will save you from sorting through recipes in other books that may be heavy with pancetta, salami, Parma ham, and anchovies. Mr. Bishop gives us real Italian without giving us the feeling that something has been left out.
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