The New Whole Grains Cookbook: Terrific Recipes Using Faro, Quinoa, Brown Rice, Barley, and Many Other Delicious and Nutritious Grains

Yes we do have a poor grain diet in America, but if the author really wanted to give more punch to her recipes and "sell" grains to Americans, she should have included more photos. The two recipes I have tried I liked. A source for grain purchase would have been helpful as well as the only grains I find here in town are the quinoa, some of the rices, and barley. This book is a good collection starter on grains; however, more cookbooks on the subject will definitely be needed.

It is a very colorful book with lots of pictures, tastefully laid out, and it has some useful recipes. I bought it mostly for the brown rice and barley sections. There really wasn't much on them, but what there was was useful. Someone had an eye for attractive food pictures.

I have a substantial cooking background, being fully into details of Russian, Japanese and American traditional cuisines, and I am used to cooking lunches and dinners for my family, while being busy as well.So while I feel the cooking naturally, I am also well into the task of eating healthy, have a variety AND within the reasonable time frame. Is this book a help? Not at all!Yes I was hoping to add some variety in the whole grains, have read that we are supposed to be eating MOSTLY whole grains instead of breads and potatoes, the question that arises is - what are they, really? Of course I know some grains and know some dishes with them, and yes I can soak them etc.. but I felt like I could benefit a lot if this direction was further extended. So I've got this book and here is what I found out.1) The ingredients are CRAZZZY. While being up to go get some quinoa from out there and I actually have some wild rice at home, a variety of spices.. I would love to incorporate it with some other healthy stuff, this book offers recipes that I can only make if I get crush on them. The recipes are full of capers, currants, coconut milk, gluten flour, fresh rosemary leafs, fresh thyme leafs, chopped crystallized ginger, turbinado sugar, sun-dried tomatoes, wheat germs, kamut flour, maple sugar chunks, soy protein powder, dried mint flakes, flax oil, truffle oil, red miso, sesame oil, watercress leafs, bean spruts, artichokes, edamame, julienned fresh basil, enoki mushrooms, baby arugula, black mustard seeds, fresh sorrel, gyoza wrappers, aged fontina cheese, olivada black olive paste, lemongrass, peanut oil, tobiko, crab legs, canned water chestnuts, shaoxing rice wine, cornstarch, dried porcini mushrooms, pumpkin seed oil, Pinot Noir, prosciutto, saffron threads, almond extract, lime leaves, canned pumpkin, arrowroot, hazelnut paste or oil or something, can not find it..Do you have most of them handy?This ingredients go along with sometimes quite unusual grains, which is expected, this is what you get the book for. But having couscous, pumpkin seeds, two types of sesame oil, sea weed, some unbelievably rare fresh leaves, like those of the lime or sorrel and a suggestion that it is served best with asparagus, all in one dish is EASILY what you get with this book.CRAZY.2) The book makes a "full of pictures" feeling, but in reality, the majority of the majority of the pictures out there are showing views of plates or cups or grains itself.. Totally serving the design purposes, is it bad? Well, I want to see what the finished dish looks like to have an idea, whether it is something worth efforts.I found 24 different dishes shown with pictures, half of them are sweets, like scones, muffins or puddings. All other pictures are not informative.So many culinary books still believe we will try to follow things just because they are written, i guess this industry will either come to its end or start developing books carefully, making each recipe at least once before including it and give us a picture of each. So far, internet does, indeed, a way better job. You can find endless variety and complete illustrated beautiful instructions. I only don't like to bring the laptop to kitchen and the book is handy.. I thought.3) Even those shown with pictures look completely not attractive to me. Oily, squeeze, heavy.. with crazy ingredients, take plenty of time and come out with the usual, dull look. I will only probably try to make 2 recipes out of the whole book. But probably only one.4) It is not the dietary culinary collection, no. But it is generally expected that most of the people interested in whole grains are concerned with healthy eating. If this is the case with you, the best you can do is never even peek into its pages. Oily, greasy, sweet (plenty of sweets! Not a million times healthier than what you get in that cafe across the street), lots of meat, includes potatoes and sweet potatoes, which is a no-no for many, who tries to avoid fast hydrocarbs, often includes flour, just going along with some whole grain ingredient.After all, you are looking for some elegant way to incorporate more of the whole grains to your diet?This is not a way.The only reason I keep it is the shipping costs which make it no benefit at all to return anything like that.

Like many people, I have been trying to improve my diet, cut out processed foods and eat more whole foods. While searching for healthier alternatives I stumbled across this book, and I am so glad I did. Whether you are looking for a recipe to prepare a healthy filling meal or a delicious side dish, you will be sure to find something tempting in this collection of recipes. There are even some excellent desserts. My favorite recipes: the Whole Wheat Walnut Scones and the Zuppa Fiorentina.I love the fact that the author took the time to describe each of the grains used in the recipes, their individual history, traditional uses, and simple preparation techniques for each grain outside of the main recipes.The book is colorful, well written and well laid out. I wouldn’t usually recommend cookbooks for their beautiful photographs, but great recipes aside, this is a gorgeous book.

I bought this book looking for more recipes on whole grain cooking, a request made by my husband. We're kind of new to cooking with whole grains and if you take a look out there on whole grain cookbooks, there's not a lot. This could have really been an awesome reference for this niche. Instead I found it to be another "coffee table cookbook", where looks matter more than content.And there is good content, I'll admit. But what went wrong is the presentation. Here's what I mean.First, the recipe titles are too long. "Middle Eastern Lentil Rice Rolls with Taratoor Sauce". How about this one: "Chicago Deep-dish Spinach Portobello Sausage Pizza". When a title has to broken down into two separate lines you know there's a problem. It takes me 5 seconds to work out the title in my mind and picture the image. That's exhausting after 75 recipes.And guess what? You do have to imagine what something looks like because pictures are missing. Here's the second problem. I know colored photos in books are expensive but many of these recipes are just too weird to not include a picture. This is what is absolutely amazing, sometimes there are colored pictures next to recipe, except they are not photos of the food. They are "artsy" photos of nothing in particular such as a portion of a spoon handle on a place mat, or a piece of napkin on a table. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? You want me to imagine Summer Grilled Vegetable Salad with Black Rice and Arugula, and want to help me out by including a picture of a spoon on a plate? Gah! But the design elements on the top of the page are cute (those are bleed-cut elements and make the book printing even more expensive but I guess they saved money on the photography.)

This book meets most of my needs for cooking and preparing whole grains which are most healthy for our hearts. I like to try new grains and this books gives me the chance to do that. I am very excited to try the many recipes.B. Koch

I really can't rate it yet because I haven't tried to use it yet but I do like how the book shows the different types of grain that is used for bread.

THe book has a few recipes I have tried to far. It seems to be a little too gourmet/complicated for me generally but I am still learning.