Product Description

Vermont is the home of The Cooks Garden, America's premier organic seed catalogue. Since 1984, The Cook's Garden has been the ultimate source for kitchen gardeners seeking European-style greens, heirloom vegetables, radiant flowers, and pungent herbs. Each winter more than one million eager gardeners await the arrival of The Cook's Garden catalogue, looking forward to reading about new seed varieties as well as reliable classics.

Successfully growing vegetables, herbs, and flowers is just part of any gardening challenge, but what do you do once they are harvested?

Ellen Ogder's recipes are one of the most delightful aspects of The Cooks Garden catalogue. As Deborah Madison, bestselling author of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and Local Flavors writes in her foreword: "These recipes, which are entirely guided by the garden and choice of seeds that grow in it, bridge the gap between a dream on a page promised by a seed packet and how the seeds can be used in the kitchen."

Ellen's recipes are simple yet elegant and speak of freshness whether you harvest ingredients from your own garden or select them at your local store -- flavorful soups such as Zesty Lemon Cucumber Soup and Brilliant Butternut Bisque, salad combinations such as Arugula and Roasted Pear Salad, and Leaf Peeper's Carrot and Red Cabbage Salad, main courses such as Savory Vegetables in Polenta Crust or Herbed Chicken with Cider Sauce. Too many tomatoes or pears? Ellen offers ideas for preserving the bounty of any garden.

Illustrated with full-color woodcuts by Caldecott winner Mary Azarian and packed with topics from Ellen's favorite culinary herbs to favorite autumn vegetables, From The Cook's Garden offers a yearround garden of culinary delights.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #968020 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Plowing a field similar to that cultivated by last year's Local Flavors, by Deborah Madison (who provides the foreword here), Ogden extols the pleasures of preparing fresh-from-the-garden meals. Co-owner with husband Shepherd of The Cook's Garden, a popular mail-order seed company, Ogden emphasizes the quality, taste and variety of produce now available from home and farmers' markets. Her recipes exhibit a deft hand in building dishes with complementary flavors, as in Zesty Lemon Cucumber Soup or Herbed Ricotta Gnocchi with Spinach-Arugula Pesto. Ogden really shines with her section on salads, which includes the unusual Warm Spinach and Strawberry Salad and Grilled Radicchio and Gorgonzola Salad. Although the focus is solidly on vegetables, herbs and fruits, non-vegetarian dishes range from the simple Baked Scrod with Fennel and Garlic Croutons to the more complicated Vietnamese Salad Rolls with Chicken and Shrimp, and Salmon in Phyllo Packets with Tomato and Ginger. Ogden frequently recommends difficult-to-find ingredients such as Chioggia (candy-striped) beets for Beet, Apple and Goat Cheese Salad, and black kale for Polenta with Tuscan Kale, but she also advises that the common variety of vegetables will suffice. Since gardening is a seasonal joy, recipes for preserves like Carrot and Orange Marmalade and Plum and Pear Chutney are a welcome addition, as are the homey drawings by Caldecott Award winner Azarian.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Spring's approach brings the promise of planting and another season of garden produce. Ellen Ecker Ogden has written From the Cook's Garden as a guide for those seeking some new ways to use up their garden bounty. Ogden's own immense Vermont garden provides the basis for these recipes, and they reflect thoughtful and tasty ways to produce appealing dishes from the freshest ingredients. Although most recipes offer ease of preparation, Ogden's cold creamy red beet soup with pistachio mousse calls for a base of cider, wine, and cinnamon and tops each bowlful with dollops of whipped ricotta, pistachios, and green herbs. Many of the book's recipes are vegetarian, but a few have fish or meat as prominent flavors. Because gardens often produce more than can be consumed during the harvest months, Ogden closes her book with a section on preserving, both in cans and in the freezer. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Ellen Ecker Ogden oversees The Cook's Garden catalogue and directs its test kitchen program, including the annual Summer Tasting and Open House. A freelance food and garden writer, she has been a contributing editor to Country Living Gardener magazine and has written for many other magazines. She lives with her family in Londonderry, Vermont.

Customer Reviews

A spectacular treat!
My husband and I have been customers of the Cook's Garden seed catalog for over a decade. We might be an example of your worst nightmare, or wildest dream--we're foodies who became so fanatical about using only the best, freshest, in-season, organic ingredients that we now have a 10-acre organic farm where we do market gardening. We do all this so we can and do grow vegetables you see in this beautiful publication.

Other than its high production values, what is so special about this book? It presents an extraodinarily wide variety of produce as delectable dinner-time treats. For me, it gives depth to my already broad repertoire of veggie dishes. As an added bonus, I can give this cookbook to our friends and family who are reluctant to try cardoons or don't know that beets and chard come in a rainbow of colors. Suddenly, it's OK to give them strange veggies, because they know what to do with them. For those of you who don't know the joy of strolling through your own kitchen garden to decide what's for dinner, you can now stroll with confidence through the trendiest green grocer or farmers market, pick up what ever is freshest, and in season, and head home knowing you can find a delightful way to prepare and enjoy your find.

We've tried several of the recipes. They're yummy! All are inspiring.

And if you decide to try growing your own, remember there are those who farm many acres that started with a single grow box for fresh salad greens on the deck of their townhouse.

This makes eating your vegetables a joy!

foody heaven
As a foody who lives part of the year in Central London with all great restaurants and who also lives in the Dordogne with all its great produce, I have really enjoyed reading and cooking from this book. It's imaginative, easy to use, beautifully illustrated and inspiring. It is quintessentially American, and I will be introducing it and the recipes to all my friends in Europe.