Six Seasons A New Way with Vegetables PDF Free Download

Whether you have your own vegetable gardens or get a weekly CSA box or patronize a thriving farmers’ market, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of this book. If you would rather eat veggies than meat, you have to have it. I haven’t seen such an exciting and creative vegetable-themed cookbook in a long time. Besides dealing with the vegetables themselves, Joshua McFadden has loaded this book with wonderful vinaigrettes, sauces, and butters. He makes valuable and experienced recommendations of his favorite flavor enhancers, too.

I am so enamored of this book that it sits on the edge of my ottoman where I prop my feet up, and I re-read some part of it daily: It is that time of the year when veggies really come into their own–exciting and varied and so obviously fresh–that I can’t get enough of them. It is so, so satisfying and rewarding to have so many terrific recipes to refer to for the vegetables and herbs and greens that I have at hand, in hand. We do get a CSA half-bushel box each Wednesday, and I always have an assortment of fresh vegetables in our refrigerator bins, with overflow in a cooler on our porch. I also have a thriving herb garden, and a small raised garden of leafy greens. Plus my tomatoes are ripening, and sweet corn is ready in my area. (The corn recipes in this book are great!) So, this cookbook is right up my alley, and it came available at the perfect time.

And, get this: He encourages us to eat our green salads with our hands. Tried it and loved it and will continue to eat salads with my fingers from here on out.

He does an excellent job of training the reader to season properly. He salts, peppers, and dashes vinegars on his fresh greens, then tastes and adjusts. Then he adds olive oil for richness and mellowness. The technique works well for me.

McFadden has a technique that I find invaluable: Dry-grill veggies. After many years of trying, I had finally discontinued grilling vegetables. Period. Didn’t like the taste of most veggies on the grill. McFadden claims that off-flavor is the oil in the marinade or simply the oil that one uses to “grease” whatever vegetables get put on the grill. Solution? Don’t oil them, put them on the grill without adornment, and dress them after you take them off the grate. Simply amazing how well this technique works.

He also is a fan of refrigerator pickles. I am too, and I am always searching for and buying cookbooks that contain new ideas for frig pickles. There are two charts for frig pickles–listing vegetables along with appropriate seasonings to go into a basic brine. There is a longer list of vegetables that go into a cold brine, a short list suited for a hot brine.

I like that he incorporated grains into his veggie dishes, too.

And the idea of six seasons? It’s about time we acknowledge them. Those of us who garden vegetables know in the back of our minds that there are many differences between early and late summer. Those of us down South, (I grow in south-central Texas), can even call out Early Spring and Late Spring, and Early Fall and Late Fall, rather than the three Summer seasons that are called out in this book. But it is good to acknowledge them all: For me, acknowledgement spurs me to plant earlier and more.

Recipes in this book are arranged by season, then alphabetically by main vegetable. There are line drawings in addition to full-color photos of the veggies themselves, how-to photos and finished dishes. The pages are a nice, heavy stock, and the books is a hardback.

My favorite recipe at this point is a fairly simple one: Grilled Carrots, Steak, and Red Onion with Spicy Fish-Sauce Sauce. I could make it all grilling season long. And I don’t need the steak. And I can make it with summer squash, too, but the carrots and onions is a must. And the Spicy Fish-Sauce Sauce comes together in a few minutes of prep work. (I use Red Boat fish sauce as McFadden recommends).

The sliced Hakurei turnips with herbs, yogurt and poppy seeds is almost too awesome looking to eat–but we did, and can’t wait until those turnips come back into season.

How much do I love this book? I am a reviewer of cookbooks. It’s one of my hobbies. And I first received this one as a temporary download from the publisher. I worked with the recipes for quite a while before this book was published a few weeks ago. But, as you can see from the “” tag at the top of this review, I had to have my own copy. And, now that it is in my hot hands, I can say that it’s even better than it was in its preliminary form.”