The Good Cook's Book of Tomatoes: A New World Discovery and Its Old World Impact, with more than 150 recipes

by Michele Anna Jordan, Flo Braker (Foreword), Liza Gershman (Photographer)

In The Good Cook’s Book of Tomatoes, the third in the ongoing, expertly researched culinary series, Michele Jordan brings her creative zeal to one of the most popular fruits on the market. An indispensable reference for any cook’s shelf, The Good Cook’s Book of Tomatoes contains over 200 recipes including robust dishes such as Tomato Pasta with Chicken, Olives, & Dried-Tomato Cream Sauce, Tomato Concassé. For anyone who feels there’s no such thing as too many tomatoes, this is the definitive book—the only one with recipes for beverages, appetizers, breads, soups, salads, sauces, and much more.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food

352 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 1995

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great cookbook - it includes a deep background on tomatoes from growing, to buying, to cooking, and a wide variety of recipes from starters to soup to entries. The first cookbook that I've ever given 5 stars, for what that's worth.

[Yaaresse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore vine-ripe tomatoes, and I enjoy Jordan's writing from back when she wrote for our (then) local newspaper. This is a great book to have on hand at end of summer when you're running out of ideas for how to use all those wonderful tomatoes.

[Rosemary Standeven · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking forward to this book giving me ideas for dealing with my annual glut of tomatoes, but I was rather disappointed. There were not a lot of new (to me) recipes, though the soups did stand out.
I made four of the recipes: Tomato Bread Soup, Tomato & Corn Chowder with Salmon and Lemongrass, Tomato Stilton Soup and Summer Chicken Cacciatore - all very tasty. And may make a further couple of recipes at a later stage. That is really not a lot from a 401 page book.
Apart from the low number of recipes that grabbed me, I was not impressed by the poor editing. There were not pictures for all recipes (at times annoying, but not tragic), but sometimes the pictures that were there, did not match the dish that was on the same page. Also, on the Kindle version, the page numbers given in recipes for a sauce etc do not always align – same problem with the index.
And then there was the Green Shakshouka recipe that mentioned tomatillos in the ingredients, but referred to them as tomatoes in the recipe instructions. They are quite different fruits.
My recurring dislike with all American cookbooks – again here – is that they do not use metric quantities as well as the antiquated measures that only three countries in the world use (Liberia, Myanmar and USA). If the book is to be sold outside USA, surely equivalent metric units could be included in parentheses after the old-fashioned ones.
Not a great recipe book, but a few good recipes.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will check this out again in tomato season because this book is all about letting the tomato be the star of the show. 🍅 ❤