Tasty cookbooks for everyone

Vegging out

Nothing throws a carnivorous cook into more of a tailspin than trying to plan a meal for vegetarian guests.  "Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen" (Broadway, $27.50) attempts to solve that problem with an attractive collection of vegetarian entrees, accompanied by suggestions for side dishes and wine.

Madison’s book is designed for a fairly confident home cook — instructions like “cook over a lively heat” may confuse a beginner.  But while Madison’s approach is informal, the results are anything but.  An onion and rosemary tart with fromage blanc served with mushrooms and spinach wowed my friends.  My husband can’t stop talking about Madison's spinach quesadillas, despite my fear that they didn’t have nearly enough cheese. (The overload of spinach and chilies made all but a bit of good cheese seem superfluous.)  Madison loads almost all of her dishes — from quesadillas to pasta — with plenty of extra vegetables, and it works.

Broadway

This book is not just for vegetarians — even rabid meat-eaters may be swayed by the skillet-seared tofu. (I never expected the words “I love tofu” to come out of my mouth.)

Unfortunately,  Madison’s suggested side dishes are not included in "Vegetarian Suppers." Some, but not all, are in Madison’s earlier books, "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" and "Local Flavors."  This is inconvenient if you don’t own her previous works, but none of the side dishes are so complex that they can't be improvised. The wine suggestions, however, were hard to find and often out of the “everyday supper” price range. 

In this cookbook, Deborah Madison has created an invaluable tool for those who want to rethink supper.      —Hannah Meehan Spector

Reinventing the burger

Gibbs Smith

What makes a perfect burger?  That’s a topic for endless debate, but I’ll stand by my belief that it should combine the best beef you can afford with a good bun, maybe some fresh lettuce and tomato, and well-made condiments.  It’s all about the flavor of the meat.

London chef Paul Gayler agrees in “The Gourmet Burger” (Gibbs Smith, $25), arguing that “the better the meat, the better your burgers will taste.”  So why, I kept asking myself as I spent nearly an hour prepping each of his haute burger concoctions, was he masking great meat with unnecessarily complicated salads and sauces and sides?  After sampling each creation, what my dining companions and I really wanted was a simple well-made burger.

Consider the Bloody Mary burger, Gayler’s vodka-less homage to the drink.  Despite chunks of onion and celery mixed into the meat, which was then spiced with Worcestershire and horseradish, the patties tasted dull and struggled to cling together. A celeriac Waldorf salad meant for garnish was tasty, but also labor-intensive and a distraction. When diners’ only praise comes for the Tabasco-cumin ketchup, you know something’s amiss.

Gayler attempts to reinvent the wheel here — or at least the patty — and I think he tries too hard.  I conceptually appreciate the indulgence of the fillet burger Rossini, which combines ground beef and steak filets with a foie gras garnish.  But it’s all too much.

His condiment recipes, especially, may be appropriate for a hotel chef with 40 extra pairs of hands, but the chopping and grinding needed for a relish to top an already elaborate hunk of ground protein strikes me as pointless drudgery.  And his admonition not to overwork meat — instead, to softly press it into a ball — left me puzzled as to how the fat was supposed to bind the whole mess together. The burgers too often tasted loose and mushy.

The more tarted up these recipes became, the more I craved the beauty of the original hamburger. Hold the remoulade.     —J.B.

Retro disappointment

I was perhaps too excited about "Retro Baking: 100 Classic Contest Winners Updated for Today" by Maureen Fischer (Collectors Press, $17). But the charming vintage-look cover and enticing subtitle sounded unbeatable. I'm fascinated with the evolution of how and what we cook, and am a fan of Cooking Light magazine's column where they lighten up favorite recipes. I guess I expected something similar.

Sadly, "Retro Baking" is more a design achievement than a cookbook. While the book does list recipes, there's no acknowledgment of what contest the recipe won, and when. There's no indication of how the recipe was lightened up or how it looked originally.

And while the pages are decorated with cute, vintage-looking images, that's almost more of a detriment than a plus. The image that shares a page with a certain recipe is not of that dish, which is sometimes obvious but other times puzzling. On the page with the recipe for choco-peanut sandwich cookies, an image was chosen of a similar looking cookie, but not a sandwich cookie. It's a shame, because when I made the recipe, I could have really used an image to see how the cookies were assembled. The two batters in the recipe were tasty, but they kind of melded together in the oven, hardly what I'd call a sandwich cookie.

Some of the recipes seemed stuck in a time warp. I've only lived in Seattle for three years, but that's long enough to know that no Northwesterner is going to call something "Northwest's Best Salmon Pie" that includes canned salmon. Ditto Northwest Cranberry Cobbler, which called for canned cranberry sauce. I'm certain canned products were relied upon when these contests were entered, but doesn't the whole idea of "updated for today" imply fresher, healthier ingredients?

"Retro Baking" gets an A for concept, but an F for execution.    —G.F.C.

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper is MSNBC.com's Books Editor. Jon Bonné is an MSNBC.com writer and editor who specializes in writing about food and wine. Hannah Meehan Spector is a writer in Los Angeles.

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