Product Description

This is the ultimate all-in-one reference for anyone who orders a fruit or vegetable box, is a regular at a farmers' market or simply dreams of a life filled with good quality food. Taking us through the year in six seasonal chunks of two months each, Gardener's World presenter Sarah Raven introduces us to the best vegetables, fruit and herbs grown in the UK. For each one, there are hosts of simple yet inspiring recipes - over 450 in all - ranging from Warm broad bean salad to Green mayonnaise; Spinach and Gruyere tart to Mint and pea tip risotto; Sweet potato gratin to Celeriac souffle; and Basil ice cream to Damson and almond pudding. Practical, engaging, and gorgeously realised with Jonathan Buckley's vivid photographs taken in Sarah's family garden in East Sussex, Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook offers a colourful and delicious repertoire of ideas that put vegetables, herbs and fruit at the centre of every meal, all year round.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1402 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 464 pages

Review
'Sarah's recipes are friendly, practical, inspiring and often ingeniously simple. This brilliant and timely book puts fresh, seasonal, local fruit and veg back where they belong: right at the heart of every good cook's kitchen. It's pretty much the book I was hoping to write myself. I'll have to think of something else now ' Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall 'How could anyone not want to grow and cook their own food after reading this book? Sarah's enthusiasm, wisdom and encouragement shine through on every page. It will be as invaluable in the kitchen as it will be in the garden' Nigel Slater 'This is a unique book for both gardeners and cooks, combining Sarah's passion for growing herbs, salads and vegetables with a wide variety of delicious seasonal recipes' Rose Gray

Nigel Slater
'How could anyone not want to grow and cook their own food after
reading this book?'

Rose Gray
'This is a unique book for both gardeners and cooks'

Customer Reviews

Amazing cookbook, but frustrating at times
I have resisted writing a review until now, as by and large I think this is a wonderful book and I am in agreement with many of the positive reviews. However, I have experienced my fourth "disaster" using recipes from this book today and I really had to say something. I am a fairly experienced cook but this book really does not explain things as well as it should / could. I made the "Mushrooms with polenta" which says that you need to allow the polenta to "cool completely" before cutting it into wedges to fry. However, given the quantities of water required in the recipe in proportion to the polenta (1.5L water to 140g polenta), there is NO WAY you are ever going to "cool completely" enough to be able to cut it into wedges from just cooking it a "few minutes" as Ms Raven suggests, unless you subsequently put it in the deep freeze overnight. This I knew from experience, but I gave Ms. Raven the benefit of the doubt. The result: completely liquidy polenta and hours wasted boiling down and a ruined saucepan. I have had other similar episodes: The "Meringue roulade with raspberries", delicious though it was, was not deemed a success due to the recipes direction: "Place the tin fairly near the top of the preheated oven" - now, my oven is not a very expensive one - it has, as its heat source at the top, an electric grill even in an oven setting. This means that if you put things too close it will inevitably brown quicker than normal ovens. Which is exactly what happened to my meringue, browning the top and the almonds but not cooking the inside, leading to a mushy meringue. I would have appreciated an explanatory note for different kinds of ovens. The "Mint and apple compote" was another one. As the recipe does not specify what kind of apple, I presumed unwisely that it must be cooking apples. How wrong I was. Cooking apples do not disintegrate adequately for you to be able to push it successfully through any "coarse sieve". As a result my husband spent the better part of half an hour pushing the stuff through the sieve, which probably would have been done quicker in a mouli which is another implement Ms. Raven suggests apart from a coarse sieve but unfortunately we don't possess. Yes I know, I should have read the recipe properly where I would have learned that you need to push it through a sieve i.e. cannot use cooking apples, but we don't always have time for that. Sometimes all you have time for is a quick 5 minutes scanning through cookery books and writing a shopping list from the recipes. The same with the "Courgette souffle tart", which sounds delicious but was a watery mess, completely inedible, because nowhere in the recipe does Ms Raven explain that one needs to salt and squeeze the water out of the courgettes beforehand. Normally I never salt courgettes / aubergines etc and they turn out fine but admittedly I had never cooked courgettes in a tart before. Again, this is explained at the beginning of the courgette chapter, but I had not read this - and I would have thought it essential advice to give in the recipe itself, as one doesn't always have time to leisurely read recipe books from cover to cover. Having said all of this, I have made lots of other delicious and wonderful meals from this book, and it is packed with information on sowing, harvesting and cooking methods. You will not regret buying it but read each recipe carefully and if you are not sure about something, ask an expert.

Really wonderful uses for homegrown vegetables - and even bought ones
I bought this book because my husband gardens enthusiastically by Sarah Raven's The Great Vegetable Plot, a present from his daughter.

I have a lot of cookery books on my shelves. But having just browsed through Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook, I can tell you at once that I will be using this book often. Some of her recipes I have already used; she is generous throughout with other people's ideas (and acknowledges them). It is tremendously useful to have, gathered together in one volume, so many things to do with the sometimes over-abundant produce of the potager. And indeed to showcase those first delicate broad beans, asparagus spears, peas and new potatoes.

The emphasis here is on vegetables and fruit, but the book is not vegetarian. Where a few slivers of raw ham will make things more delicious, there they are. And delicious the recipes look. Ms Raven's days working at the River Café shine through her use of fresh garden produce.

But if you have no garden, the book will still give you plenty of ideas. And I mean plenty. This is not one of those cookbooks with only one recipe to a spread. There are lots, and lots. And the introduction to each fruit or vegetable contains still more ideas, often simple and quick, always mouth-watering.

The book is well produced with thick pages and two ribbon markers (already in use chez moi - and the book only arrived here where I live in rural France with the postman around midday today).

The index looks excellent (really important if you are searching for a way of using a glut of a particular herb, or lesser ingredient). I would have enjoyed a bibliography, but the generous acknowledgement of sources throughout the text adequately replaces one.

A truly inspirational book
Sarah Raven will be a familiar name to some, as she is a presenter on TV's `Gardener's World', with 'Monty Don', who pens on the back cover:-

'Sarah is a superb cook and a truly fine gardener. Every page of this wonderful book is rich with authenticity and experience and a celebration of the best that a garden can produce. It is an inspiration.'

In her book, 'The Great Vegetable Plot', she wrote:-

'A vegetable garden is a beautiful thing to make, with the bonus of producing the best possible things to eat. If you get it right the whole place can become your market, your haven and your playground.'

Garden Cookbook is all about the pleasure that fruit and vegetables can give you; its aim is to put them at the centre of every meal.
It's also a practical guide to all that is wonderful in the edible plant kingdom, with more than 450 recipes using the vegetable garden - or a good seasonal market or greengrocer - as both their source and inspiration.
It is not a vegetarian book although it contains plenty of recipes that have nothing but vegetables in them......'

The vibrant cover opens to 464 shiny high quality pages and with the two cheery coloured ribbon page makers - one green/one orange to keep your places - it is already apparent that this is going to be a quality publication.
Simply split into six 2-monthly chapters then subdivided into the seasonal-relevant featured produce and completed with a comprehensive index.
Interspersed with on-location photography, and some of the recipes featured, from Jonathan Buckley.

Each chapter opens with relevant information about the individual fruit or vegetable featured, including helpful, down-to-earth preparation advice, e.g.:-

Cabbage:-
When you are preparing cabbage, rip of the leaves one at a time and get rid of most of the central stem. It cooks at a different rate to the leaves so chuck it away......Cabbage has a versatile flavour which is delicious with butter and plenty of salt and pepper.....If on a diet, treat it like pasta, cut it up into fine spaghetti-like strands and serve it with a scattering of Parmesan cheese....
As well as green or white cabbage, at this time of year you must have a few meals of red. The virtues of red cabbage are its incredible colour and its texture, which is firmer than green. It will take more cooking so it is the ideal vegetable for rich, reduced slow-cooked dishes like braised red cabbage and soup. With an added acid - vinegar or wine - the colour fixes as a brilliant magenta.
Without this, it can turn an unappetising grey.'

Then come a few recipes featuring the said item.
Each recipe is clearly laid out with an opening note, number of servings, the list of ingredients and the method.

Recipes include:-

Savoy Cabbage and Coriander Soup
Seville Marmalade
Rosemary and Pork Farfalle
Fillet of Beef with Rocket
Vegetable Korma
Spring Greens Risotto
Spinach and Gruyère Tart
Asparagus Omelette
Caesar Salad
Smashed Roast New Potatoes with Garlic & Rosemary
Pea Purée
Strawberry and Black Pepper Ice Cream
Almond Meringues
Cherry Clafoutis
Smoked Haddock and Nasturtium Fish Cakes
Salad Niçoise
Gooseberry Fool
Whole Fish stuffed with Fennel
Pizza
Kentish Apple Cake
Moussaka
Chilli Chocolate
Cranachan
Pear, Apple and Quince Charlotte
Game Salad with Pomegranate
Cranberry Vodka
Vegetable Stock
Scotch Broth

This book is further enhanced by the charming acknowledgements given to all who have helped and inspired the publication, such as, for the following recipe:-

Chorizo with Potatoes

'Originally a Nigella Lawson recipe championed by Nigel Slater in `Real Food', this is a quick, cheap and easy dish.......Just replace 100g chorizo with 100g morcilla. The morcilla will break up during the cooking, thereby enriching the sauce.......'

SUPER book!