New York: Ten Speed Press, 2020. 249pp.

There are a lot of things to like about Bryant Terry’s Vegetable Kingdom. The first is how much the author’s personality comes through. I find that cookbooks can often give you a sense of a person in a way many other things can’t. And my conclusion about Bryant Terry is, man, I love this guy! I adore how he vibes with his kids about cooking and food — his daughter suggested the unorthodox way this book is arranged — and he went with it. He has a fabulous sense of humor. And – get this – he includes suggestions for music to play while you prepare each recipe. When we are young we learn so much about prospective friends by their taste in music, but as we get older we kind of get stuck in our ways, so this was a fun a way to learn about some new tunes. The layout of this book is clean and clear, and the recipes are impeccably proofread. I particularly like the way the names of the recipes appear as they would on a fine dining menu, like this:

simple celery salad
charred lemon oil •salt • white pepper• parsley

Sometimes, however, I come across a cookbook that I think works best as a form of entertainment and inspiration more than an actual cooking guide. I am a person who loves reading cookbooks as much as cooking from them so I have no problem with this. For me, this is one of those books. As I mentioned, this book isn’t organized in a traditional way – by dish type or by season – but by the type of vegetable: seeds, bulbs, stems, flowers, fruits, leaves, fungi, tubers, and roots. That’s a cool concept, but it’s not generally the way I use cookbooks. I am more apt to be looking for an app or a side or a main, for example, and even within the different veg sections, this isn’t broken down that way.

Many of the recipes also take a very, very long time. A lot of it is passive time, but it still requires a lot of planning ahead and kind of being around. For example, I made the Spinach Salad with Blackened Chickpeas from the “leaves” section. This requires rinsing the chickpeas and then letting them dry for an hour, then roasting them for 45 minutes, and roasting your own peppers (a process I know a lot of home cooks don’t mind, but I find it to be a chore) and making your own Blackened Seasoning. The recipe for the seasoning makes ½ cup, but the salad only calls for two teaspoons. The instructions indicate it will keep for two weeks, but I’m not going to use half a cup of seasoning in two weeks. That’s a lot of work for a salad which was fine, but didn’t taste like it took hours to plan and make. (Also, maybe it’s just me, but I don’t like “adult” spinach in salads, even chopped small. I find it kind of waxy and hard to chew.) A number of the other recipes also require making ones own spice mix. The Haricot Vert and Mushroom Stew from the Seeds section calls for ½ tsp of homemade Xingjang Spice Mix from a recipe that makes 1/4 cup. The recipe says it will last for six months, but will I remember to use my Xingjang spice mix? Probably not.

I had a similar experience with the Millet Roux Mushroom Gumbo. This took over three hours to make – first prepping and chopping – then 75 minutes to stir the roux and an hour to sauté the veg and simmer the gumbo. I couldn’t find millet flour, so I had to substitute brown rice flour, and that may be why this dish just lacked a depth of flavor for me. I have a feeling the problem resulted from home-cook user error – I’ve never made a true slow-cooked roux like that before – but it was a lot of time invested for kind of a disappointing payoff.

One thing I will say about these recipes is that they are very vegetable forward – they feel very fresh and healthy. This was true of the Farro and Kidney Beans with Burnt Scallions as well as the previously mentioned Haricot Vert and Mushroom Stew. I felt good about eating them, but somehow I just didn’t want to hurry to make them again.

What I definitely DO want to make again is the Oven-Roasted Carrots with Carrot Top-Walnut Pesto. I have never eaten carrot tops before, and this is so flavorful and good. This recipe recommended removing the skin from the walnuts, which I did not do. This seems like adding a lot of unnecessary work to one of the more straightforward dishes in the book, which tastes great without this step. ALSO, and this is the thing which will make Bryant Terry live in my head forever – he taught me about peeling celery. Yes, you can take a paring knife and run in down the outside of the stalk and pull out all those annoying strings! 😯I am not a celery hater, but not a lover either, and this technique totally improved the celery experience for me. I applied it in the Crunchy, Bitter, and Tart Salad with Sweet Mustard Vinaigrette, which was colorful and, like the others, quite celebratory of the vegetables themselves.

Another highlight: His Umami Powder upgrades the usual cashew/nutritional yeast parm with the addition of ground up dried mushrooms. Yum. If you can afford it….

Which leads me to note: a lot of the recipes in this book call for expensive ingredients and things that may be a little hard to find. For example, I had to skip the Carmelized Leek and Seared Mushroom Toast because it calls for 3/4 cup of pine nuts and one pound of wild mushrooms – so that’s like 30 bucks for four servings of fancy toast. There are also a number of recipes featuring taro and sunchokes, which I don’t see around much.

Ultimately, I would rate this book Vegan Advanced. I think Bryant Terry is such a such a better cook than I am, he is able to coax flavor out of ingredients in a way that one can’t quite teach in a book. If you are that kind of cook, or the kind that isn’t a strict recipe follower and simply wants a joyful, creative source of inspiration, this bool fills that need completely. What I really want is to have Bryant Terry put on some of his signature tunes and cook his food FOR me, so it’s done right. Now that would be an amazing evening.

Note: I did not receive any form of compensation in exchange for this review.