cover image Quick Harvest: A Vegetarian's Guide to Microwave Cooking

Quick Harvest: A Vegetarian's Guide to Microwave Cooking

Pat Baird. Prentice Hall, $21.95 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-13-945718-0

Nutritionist and food writer Baird contributes many useful recipes and techniques to the burgeoning literature of the microwave. While labeling her book ``vegetarian,'' the author leaves all proselytizing and theorizing behind, focusing instead on meatless recipes and dozens of ideas for quickly cooked, nutritious and original vegetable dishes (what she calls ``the crowning glory of the microwave'')--recipes that may stand alone or serve equally well as accompaniment to meat, fish or seafood dishes. Some of the best of these include chestnut soup, rosemary-scented spoon bread, herbed green and yellow squash, and Thai vegetable curry. While a substantial back-of-the-book index includes an overview of microwave techniques for a vast variety of vegetables, grains and cereals, along with menu ideas, Baird's recommended substitutions for (and explanations of) unusual ingredients in the recipes are spotty. Missing is the alternate term for chayotesic squash--called mirlitonsic in Southern states--or where to buy the norisic (seaweed) sheets essential for vegetarian sushi. Furthermore, for what it's worth, Baird's straightforward, at times clinical writing style makes this more of a reference volume than a good curl-up-by-the-fire read. (Mar.)