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The Roasted Vegetable
In The Roasted Vegetable, Andrea Chesman shows how every vegetable imaginable can be oven-roasted to succulent perfection, and she offers a wide-ranging collection of 150 mouthwatering recipes to please even the fussiest eaters. With recipes from simply sensational sides like Mixed Roasted Mushrooms in a Soy Vinaigrette to satisfying main dishes like Baked Orzo with Roasted Fennel and Red Peppers, vegetable lovers and vegetable haters alike will find here tasty, tempting dishes that don't require a lot of fuss.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
Andrea Chesman
45 books34 followersI write cookbooks. I also edit them. I am grateful that I have found work that I enjoy.
Pickled Pantry is my newest book. I am very excited about it, and it is already generating favorable reviews.
Mostly I have written about vegetables, but I took a break from them to write 250 Treasured Country Dessertswith my co-author Fran Raboff on, which came out in 2009. The book is an update and expanded version of Mom’s Best Desserts, which was an update and expanded version of The Great American Dessert Cookbook. The collection contains everyone’s favorite home desserts—lots of cookies, brownies, layer cakes, pies, old-fashioned fruit desserts, ice cream, and more.
The New Vegetarian Grill is an updated and expanded version of an earlier book about vegetarian grilling. I’ve also written about cooking with the seasons (Recipes from the Root Cellar, Serving Up the Harvest, The Classic Zucchini Cookbook), roasting vegetables (The Roasted Vegetable), and healthy eating (366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans, and Grains). Then there is also Mom’s Best Desserts, Mom’s Best One-Dish Suppers, and Mom’s Best Crowd-Pleasers, and a few more that are now out-of-print.
My work has appeared in Edible Green Mountains, Cooking Light, Vegetarian Times, Organic Gardening, Fine Cooking, Food & Wine, The New York Times, Natural Health, and several other magazines and newspapers. I was a Rcontributing editor for Vermont Life for twelve years.
Over the years I have edited hundreds of cookbooks, gardening books and others too varied to classify. I also Americanize cookbooks published in England and index books as well.
I live in an old farmhouse in Ripton, Vermont, a very small town where early and late frosts make gardening challenging. The poet Robert Frost used to rent a cottage across the street and took his meals in our house, in what we now call “the Robert Frost Memorial Dining Room.” I am married to Richard Ruane, a marvelous musician and recipe taster. Our kids, Rory and Sam, are also excellent cooks and enthusiastic recipe tasters. They have served as great inspiration for me.
Pickled Pantry is my newest book. I am very excited about it, and it is already generating favorable reviews.
Mostly I have written about vegetables, but I took a break from them to write 250 Treasured Country Dessertswith my co-author Fran Raboff on, which came out in 2009. The book is an update and expanded version of Mom’s Best Desserts, which was an update and expanded version of The Great American Dessert Cookbook. The collection contains everyone’s favorite home desserts—lots of cookies, brownies, layer cakes, pies, old-fashioned fruit desserts, ice cream, and more.
The New Vegetarian Grill is an updated and expanded version of an earlier book about vegetarian grilling. I’ve also written about cooking with the seasons (Recipes from the Root Cellar, Serving Up the Harvest, The Classic Zucchini Cookbook), roasting vegetables (The Roasted Vegetable), and healthy eating (366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans, and Grains). Then there is also Mom’s Best Desserts, Mom’s Best One-Dish Suppers, and Mom’s Best Crowd-Pleasers, and a few more that are now out-of-print.
My work has appeared in Edible Green Mountains, Cooking Light, Vegetarian Times, Organic Gardening, Fine Cooking, Food & Wine, The New York Times, Natural Health, and several other magazines and newspapers. I was a Rcontributing editor for Vermont Life for twelve years.
Over the years I have edited hundreds of cookbooks, gardening books and others too varied to classify. I also Americanize cookbooks published in England and index books as well.
I live in an old farmhouse in Ripton, Vermont, a very small town where early and late frosts make gardening challenging. The poet Robert Frost used to rent a cottage across the street and took his meals in our house, in what we now call “the Robert Frost Memorial Dining Room.” I am married to Richard Ruane, a marvelous musician and recipe taster. Our kids, Rory and Sam, are also excellent cooks and enthusiastic recipe tasters. They have served as great inspiration for me.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
January 30, 2012
This is truly a fantastic book -- every single recipe I have made so far has been a hit. The recipes in this book transform ordinary vegetables into delicious, caramelized versions of their former selves. And there is a wide variety of recipes on offer; this is not just a book full of side dishes. To quote Ms. Chesman's preface, "This is a cookbook for vegetable lovers and vegetable haters. It is a cookbook for people who want to eat more veggies but have had their fill of steamed carrots & stir-fried snow peas." And she delivers just that and more!
April 5, 2012
The recipes in this book are very tasty and relatively easy to prepare. I have two criticisms. Chesman has chosen eggplant as her stand-in for meat, especially in the main course menus. To mix things up, I sometimes substitute mushrooms. The other problem is that there is too much oil used. The book does not tell how many calories there are, but I am guessing that up to 6 tablespoons of oil for 6 meals would crank up the calorie count. The good news is that I found that cutting back on the oil did not have any appreciable effect.
September 28, 2008
Every fall I come back to this cookbook. When the temperatures are cool enough to turn the oven on, I love roasting root vegetables... parsnips, carrots and sweet potatoes. The roasted green bean recipe is amazing, too. This book has gotten me out of a vegetable rut many, many times!
January 31, 2018
I received this book for free in exchange for a review. I have always had a hard time cooking vegetables. The pictures were helpful along with the occasional tips. I have made several dips which I would have never tried without this book. From Jerusalem artichokes to the simple recipe of lemon-garlic vegetables I have developed a much more colorful dinner table. I have always loved leeks and cauliflower but still cannot handle the chard even with this book. I encourage everyone to try and vary their diet and experience the simple fast cooking vegetables. Thank you for allowing me to share your work.
September 16, 2026
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
A wonderful celebration of roasted vegetables!
The Roasted Vegetable is a fantastic cookbook for anyone who wants to get more flavor and variety out of vegetables. I loved the idea of treating roasting as a simple technique that can transform everyday ingredients into something truly satisfying.
The recipes offer plenty of inspiration, from sides and salads to pastas, sandwiches, dips, and more. There’s a great variety, so this book feels useful for both everyday meals and when you want to experiment in the kitchen.
A wonderful celebration of roasted vegetables!
The Roasted Vegetable is a fantastic cookbook for anyone who wants to get more flavor and variety out of vegetables. I loved the idea of treating roasting as a simple technique that can transform everyday ingredients into something truly satisfying.
The recipes offer plenty of inspiration, from sides and salads to pastas, sandwiches, dips, and more. There’s a great variety, so this book feels useful for both everyday meals and when you want to experiment in the kitchen.
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September 21, 2026★★★★★
A fantastic cookbook for anyone who loves bold, flavorful vegetables! The Roasted Vegetable makes roasting feel simple and inspiring, with creative ideas for turning perfectly roasted vegetables into delicious pasta, pizza, risotto, salads, sandwiches, dips, and more. The recipes are approachable, versatile, and packed with flavor. I especially love how the book shows just how much variety you can get from roasting vegetables. A wonderful addition to any home cook’s kitchen!
A fantastic cookbook for anyone who loves bold, flavorful vegetables! The Roasted Vegetable makes roasting feel simple and inspiring, with creative ideas for turning perfectly roasted vegetables into delicious pasta, pizza, risotto, salads, sandwiches, dips, and more. The recipes are approachable, versatile, and packed with flavor. I especially love how the book shows just how much variety you can get from roasting vegetables. A wonderful addition to any home cook’s kitchen!
January 19, 2020
Quite a few good recipes and also gave me ideas for other dishes.
February 15, 2026
Excited to try these tasty sounding recipes!
March 26, 2026
Boring
There isn't a single picture. Just lists of ingredients and recipes. I lost interest very quickly. The cover was so inviting, but you can't judge a book...
There isn't a single picture. Just lists of ingredients and recipes. I lost interest very quickly. The cover was so inviting, but you can't judge a book...
October 4, 2024
Good info but quite dense and a tad repetitive
June 26, 2009
Andrea Chesman, The Roasted Vegetable (Harvard Common, 2002)
A cookbook dedicated to the vegetable? Not a vegetarian cookbook, necessarily, but one that tells you how to get the most flavor out of the vegetables you use, and a number you don't but probably should? Sign me up. The Roasted Vegetable is that cookbook, and vegetarian as well (not vegan, as a number of these recipes call for chicken broth as opposed to vegetable; the flavor of chicken broth, according to Chesman, is more neutral than most commercial vegetable broths). Most cookbooks, even the vegetarian ones, seem to give the vegetable short shrift, relegating it to second-fiddle status behind the protein of choice, be that meat or soy, but it's the greens (and purples and reds and oranges and...) that take center stage here, and that is a wonderful thing.
There is a dark side, however. In most cookbooks, the concentration of any given ingredient is kind of spread out, so you can gloss over the subset of recipes that contains, say, coconut or pigs' feet or whatever makes you cringe. In my case, however, one of those things is eggplant, and once you get to the main dish section of this book, glossing over is an impossibility; Chesman, unlike most vegetarian cooks I've read, seems to consider the eggplant, rather than the portobello, the best way to make a vegetable into a meat substitute. (Soy fans take note: there is a small, but decent, section of tofu and tempeh recipes.) Of course, as Chesman points out once or twice, you can simply substitute meat, and I'm more than willing to admit it's just my personal ick factor that turned me off here, but man, there is so much eggplant in these pages. Ugh.
Don't let my eggplant phobia color your judgment (unless you're as repulsed by it as I am). There's so much other great stuff here it's worth your time. Where else are you going to get the definitive recipe for the most underused vegetable in America, the rutabaga? ***
A cookbook dedicated to the vegetable? Not a vegetarian cookbook, necessarily, but one that tells you how to get the most flavor out of the vegetables you use, and a number you don't but probably should? Sign me up. The Roasted Vegetable is that cookbook, and vegetarian as well (not vegan, as a number of these recipes call for chicken broth as opposed to vegetable; the flavor of chicken broth, according to Chesman, is more neutral than most commercial vegetable broths). Most cookbooks, even the vegetarian ones, seem to give the vegetable short shrift, relegating it to second-fiddle status behind the protein of choice, be that meat or soy, but it's the greens (and purples and reds and oranges and...) that take center stage here, and that is a wonderful thing.
There is a dark side, however. In most cookbooks, the concentration of any given ingredient is kind of spread out, so you can gloss over the subset of recipes that contains, say, coconut or pigs' feet or whatever makes you cringe. In my case, however, one of those things is eggplant, and once you get to the main dish section of this book, glossing over is an impossibility; Chesman, unlike most vegetarian cooks I've read, seems to consider the eggplant, rather than the portobello, the best way to make a vegetable into a meat substitute. (Soy fans take note: there is a small, but decent, section of tofu and tempeh recipes.) Of course, as Chesman points out once or twice, you can simply substitute meat, and I'm more than willing to admit it's just my personal ick factor that turned me off here, but man, there is so much eggplant in these pages. Ugh.
Don't let my eggplant phobia color your judgment (unless you're as repulsed by it as I am). There's so much other great stuff here it's worth your time. Where else are you going to get the definitive recipe for the most underused vegetable in America, the rutabaga? ***
Read
February 22, 2019-sadly, it does NOT have a picture for every recipe. 184 recipes, only 40 pictures. thats not even 1/4 of the recipes having pictures! this is a major pet peeve of mine.
-has a three-page table in the front of the book with basic roasting instructions for each individual vegetable.
--lots of interesting recipes, even with my picky eating
-aoli with garlic and dijon mustard
-brussels sprouts with pears and blue cheese
-sweet and sour red cabbage
-carrots and parsnips with lime creme fraiche
-whole roasted cauliflower with smoked cheese sauce
-cauliflower with parmesan crumbs
-roasted garlic
-roasted kohlrabi
-zucchini chips with feta and herbs
-herb roasted winter vegetables
-summer vegetable gratin
-maple balsamic glazed root vegetables
-crispy beet chips
-ten mothers garlic soup
-fettuccine alfredo with roasted vegetables
-orzo with lemon roasted summer vegetables
-winter vegetable pasta with goat cheese
-bowties with roasted green beans and cheese
-fall vegetable tart
-tamari roasted sunflower seeds
-has a three-page table in the front of the book with basic roasting instructions for each individual vegetable.
--lots of interesting recipes, even with my picky eating
-aoli with garlic and dijon mustard
-brussels sprouts with pears and blue cheese
-sweet and sour red cabbage
-carrots and parsnips with lime creme fraiche
-whole roasted cauliflower with smoked cheese sauce
-cauliflower with parmesan crumbs
-roasted garlic
-roasted kohlrabi
-zucchini chips with feta and herbs
-herb roasted winter vegetables
-summer vegetable gratin
-maple balsamic glazed root vegetables
-crispy beet chips
-ten mothers garlic soup
-fettuccine alfredo with roasted vegetables
-orzo with lemon roasted summer vegetables
-winter vegetable pasta with goat cheese
-bowties with roasted green beans and cheese
-fall vegetable tart
-tamari roasted sunflower seeds
January 9, 2010
As a person who always had to have meat for anything to qualify as a meal I am a bit clueless when it comes to meatless meals. There are a lot of good ideas for vegetable recipes in this book. I am excited to try them out.
The one thing that I do not like about this book is that there are no pictures. But the recipes are not long so it does not take you long to figure out what the finished product would look like.
The one thing that I do not like about this book is that there are no pictures. But the recipes are not long so it does not take you long to figure out what the finished product would look like.
December 11, 2014
It's amazing how roasting vegetables can transform their taste. I'm not a cook, but was so impressed by this book that I bought copies for both me and my Mom after returning my library book!
-Tracy M.
Click here to find the book at the Prince William County Public Library System.
-Tracy M.
Click here to find the book at the Prince William County Public Library System.
February 22, 2018
Apparently you can roast anything. Since roasting vegetables is the big thing right now, I picked this up to peruse. Since I have been doing some roasting of vegetables and enjoying the increased flavor in the results, I was interested in learning more. It seems like the technique is pretty much the same for all kinds of vegetables. I will have to pick this up again for additional ideas for use in making pizza and tarts.
August 24, 2014
Okay, I haven't actually tried any of the recipes yet, but they all look delicious. I love roasting veggie; I think this cookbook might have been made for me. It's not vegan, but the cheese is usually a topping that can easily be left off or replaced with a decent vegan cheese, and the honey replaced with agave nectar.
January 6, 2016
Exactly what I'm looking for! Easy, delicious ways to eat more vegetables. Summer Vegetable Gratin is on the menu for this week. So many more choices in this book: Tortellini in Roasted Tomato Broth, Roasted Potato Salad with Herbs and Parmesan Dressing and several recipes for lasagnas, salads and pizzas. I'll be busy the rest of the winter.
January 18, 2016
All superlatives. This covers all kinds of plants foods, even Jerusalem Artichokes, and explains how to bring out the flavor with roasting. Many, many recipes, most of them NOT crapped up with dairy or other white slime. Imaginative and wide-ranging, in what I would have expected to be a very slender, limited volume.
February 25, 2009
Great reference for roastin vegetables of all shapes and sizes. I first thought this book might be too basic, but it turns out it's a great reference to turn to for inspiration. Also a great starting point for those who want to branch off in their own directions.
June 16, 2012
I love roasted vegetables! I'm on a healthy cooking binge lately and this is a very nice addition to my recipe collection. I judge a cookbook by how many pages I have earmarked - and I now have over 20!
August 21, 2007
I keep re-using the recipes in this book. Even those critical of veggies appreciate them better w/ these simple (and usually quick) recipes.
September 3, 2007
OUTSTANDING.
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August 13, 2009Some good ideas along with a few recepies I would not have thought to try.
February 3, 2011
Lots of great recipes! Had to buy a copy!
May 17, 2011
read this review and others at http://readingforsanity.blogspot.com/...
August 15, 2012
enjoyed helps when in need good family meal
July 14, 2013
Liked it so much, I bought it!
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews