Dirt Candy: A Cookbook: Flavor-Forward Food from the Upstart New York City Vegetarian Restaurant

Great recipes. Great Story. Fun presentation!This cookbook was the topic of conversation as we used it at my last dinner party and we had a lot of fun making the items while people took turns reading sections of the stories.

This cook book teaches techniques that you might not have thought about when creating veggie cuisine that will render more vibrant and pure flavor from your veggie. The techniques are interchangeable and useful for other types of veggies. The book also has an illustrated story line that shows techniques and also tells the story of the opening of DIRT CANDY in NYC. It's funny and really lets you feel the vibe and philosophy of Chef Amanda Cohen. I liked it so much, felt the knowledge imparted was so useful that I bought the book. This is the first book that is less bells and whistles and more technique in rendering the purest flavors from veggies without making them mush or creating stews. I also love that the book doesn't depend on colorful photos of dishes to sell the book. It really does give useful knowledge that anyone could use to be a better chef.

You don't have to be a vegetarian or a vegan to find this book indispensable to core kitchen cooking. All the better when cutting down on portion size for meat and carbs, the gift of seasoning vegetables is doable and practical with a little self-training. Why did I buy three Dirt Candy cookbooks? Two were gifts. The one purchased for myself and loaned to a good friend and neighbor was shared with his three kids, so gifted the book and ordered a no-loaner #4 for myself. A great gift.

It's both a cookbook and a comic book! The graphic story tells the history of Dirt Candy. The recipes are sometimes technical - by that I mean the sort of recipes my chef son finds enticing.

Somehow, I missed the whole "It's a Graphic Novel - No, it's a Cookbook, NO - IT'S BOTH" thing when I ordered this, and I'm rather glad because it might have scared me off, and I really would regret NOT having this book in my collection!Absolutely spiffing. A fun read curled up on the couch - but infused with so much cookery wonder you'll keep popping up out of the seat to go play in the kitchen.Is this a book you will cook from every day? Unless your have someone else on hand to go to work, take care of the house/kids/spouse/pets/other - no. It's amazingly detailed restaurant quality recipes, MEANT to be more than your average workaday recipes. But I'm finding those fancy 'extras' are slowly filtering into my everyday cooking. The recipes are great, but what is ~AMAZING~ are the ideas. The food concepts. The bits of kitchen magic. And something I really didn't expect - her magic tricks make not just vegetarian food special - but have opened up a whole new horizon for me personally when it comes to implementing the ideas into the gluten free food I have to cook. The idea of making dumpling wrappers out of dehydrated squash paid for the book on it's own.The recipes ARE intricate, intense, and in some cases... slightly fiddly. In a GOOD way. But each recipe is also just a jumping off point to exploring new recipe methods with difference flavors, produce, applications.Well written, the graphic novel portions are wonderful - and eye opening. Even with family working in the food service biz, there are aspects of restaurant life that I was thrilled to see spelled out. Next time I get to New York, I'm definitely hitting up Dirt Candy. But until then, I'm just overwhelmingly happy to have this amazing book to start playing with in my own kitchen.

Returned this the day I received it. There are not that many recipes in the book, and the ones that are included are either rather convoluted, requiring one to flip between multiple pages to figure out all the components, or are so simple they aren't really recipes (i.e. How to pickle vegetables). On top of it, I'm not much of a comic book person so the central conceit just didn't work for me - turns out I want to see the food in all its photographic glory to feel motivated to cook. Maybe this book will work for you, but I much prefer the Thug Kitchen cook books as well as Heidi Swanson's "Super Natural Every Day" for when I want to find some cooking inspiration.

While I was very excited about this cookbook prior to release, because I mainly cook vegetarian meals and I had seen Cohen on Iron Chef and liked her style, I was at first skeptical about the "comic book" aspect of it. Not because I don't like comics, because that's not at all the case, but simply because I really enjoy a cookbook with good, full-color food photography... But I was delighted to find that the black and white comic illustrations have actually helped my fancy plating, immensely, since instead of just a photo of the finished product, you are actually given a diagram for how to assemble each dish.I will say that this book is not really for beginners. Not that anything is terribly difficult, but pretty much every dish has at least four components that all need their own special preparations. I'll commonly spend over four hours making recipes from here, and my kitchen will be a disaster area, but the results are definitely worth it. So if you're a vegetarian who loves to cook and wants some VERY unique dishes that are heavily vegetable-based (as opposed to a fake meat as the bulk of each entree...) and doesn't mind putting in the work to get them, then this is for you. The graphic novel sections are actually really great, too. Aside from being way cute, they offer a lot of insight into not only the strange world of restaurant work, but also the difficulties one happens upon by being a vegetarian.Easily the best cookbook I own, and every recipe is an eventual must-make.

All that I expected, vegetarian grand daughter quite happy.

J'ai vraiment aimé l'histoire. Les recettes sont un peu compliqués, il faut avoir le temps! Le résultat est très bon.

The recipes aren't something I would cook as a weeknight meal but more of a special occasion. The story of how Amanda came to be where she is - told as a graphic novel - is charming, witty and terribly interesting. Each recipe has a lovely description and I read it cover to cover in one night - great cookbook whether you are veggie or not!

The best vegetarian cookbook you can get.

A great memoir, a how-to about opening a restaurant and an insight into the mind of a chef. Amanda Cohen is clearly as mad as a brush but her enthusiasm is infectious.