Customer Reviews

Twelve Months of Monastery Soups: International Favorites

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I received Twelve Months of Monastery Soups as a gift for Christmas and I love it. Most of the soups have been a big hit for everyone in my family. I highly recommend this book. The recipes are easy with usually only two or three steps for each soup. I have found a couple of soups that I didn't like in here, but the overwhelming majority of them have been excellent. I especially love the Cream of Broccoli and Cream of Asparagus as well as the Potage du Jardin and Spinach Soup. I think I'm going to buy this book as a gift for several of my friends and family, since I think it was a great gift choice for me.

This cook book has a very good collection of simple soups (mostly vegetarian) that can be made quite easily. They are grouped by month and take advantage of the fresh produce that are in season. One of the great benefits of these recipes is that most of the ingredients are relatively inexpensive and healthy (e.g., carrots, onions, celery, beans). The recipes vary a great deal in taste, although many have similar ingredient lists. A great testiment to the diversity of soup. I have, however, noticed that many of the recipes call for a rather large portion of oil and turn out somewhat greasy. I recommend cutting the oil if it seems excessive.

Twelve Months of Monastery Soups is an excellent, seasonally based cookbook for practical soup making. However, you must take its estimation of servings as dubious - his "two servings" is eight servings as a meal in my house. Three things separate this volume from other soup cookbooks: (1) the soups are arranged by month that the ingrediants would be readily available in your garden or green grocer's. (2) the recipes are international but are the cooking "of the people" not of exotic chefs (3) delightful line drawings, quotations, odds bits of trivia etc. are sprinkled throughout the pages.

To give you a flavor of the variety of recipes presented: for March we find a German Saint Lioba Beer and Mushroom Soup, a Spicy (East) Indian Soup, a Basic Onion Soup, a Tuscan Green Vegetable Minestrone, an Everyday Potato Soup, a Garlic Soup, a Lima Bean Soup, a Beguine Cream Soup, a Saint Patrick Irish Cheddar Soup ... All the recipes are easily made; they have clear instructions and ingrediate lists.

Nothing warms the spirit like a bowl of soup and this book is a special joy -- filled with simple and delicious recipes for the ultimate comfort food. The recipes are organized by the months of the year to emphasize seasonal preferences and produce availability. Turn to January for great hot soups and stews in the cold months, look for lighter choices and some wonderful cold soups in the summer chapters. There are 175 (!) soup recipes in this book, all simple enough to prepare every day for your family and many elegant (yet still easy to prepare) for entertaining. The Vegetable stock in this cook book is the best and most flavorful I've ever tried and I freeze tons of it in four-cup ziplock freezer bags to use in vegetarian dishes.

The recipes are meant to be experimented with and the author gives great advice for substitutions and seasoning in the preface. Because of the special emphasis on seasonal availability of produce this cook book is the perfect choice for the kitchen gardener.

This book offers an astonishing variety of healthful and tasty soups. Some soups have complex flavors and others are elegantly simple. All the recipes I have tried have been worth making again (and again, and again...)

Every winter I make many batches of the book's parsnip soup (parsnips and potatoes accented with curry), and guests ALWAYS rave about it, though they are never able to identify the ingredients!

Whether you want to give a gift that's sure to be a hit or simply want to feed your family well, this is the cookbook for you.

Even more fun than making the soups for family and friends is showing off the book and looking up the bits of history and trivia that go along with them. The book helps one get i touch with the simpler way of life, both in food and philosophy.

I never cook, but got started cooking with these easy-to-follow soups. The tastes are AMAZING. Great book for anyone, but especially a teenager that wants to get started.

Reading this book is a beautiful experience, because father D'Avila-Latourrette shares with you in each page, in each recipe, in each advice all the magic and joy of living in a Monastery. All recipies are delightfull and not so complex to prepare at home sharing a peacefull moment with your friends and family. This book contains a lot of monastic secrets about cooking and it is so incredible that you finally think about moving to a Monastery in order to seek for a little bit of spirituality

Never can you go through this cookbook just once. There are so many recipes to choose from that are both healthful, delicious, and fun to make. The author has opened a window onto new cultures. Not only does the book contain recipes, but I was delighted to find scriptures about the soups themsleves: advice on how to prepare them, when they should be served, and things about the cultures where the soups come from. I enjoyed the poems woven throughout the book that made it even more special. A word of thanks must go out to Victor Antonie D'Avila Latourrette. You have brought great pleasure into cooking through many wonderful recipes that I would love to try over and over. One word of advice: some of the soups come out slightly bland. Experiment with the ingredients until you are satisfyed. This is the the NUMBER 1 book to have on a cookbook shelf.

This book is really fantastic, for those who want simple, tasty (mostly) vegetarian meals. Most of the recepies here call for very few ingredients, most of which are easily obtained, but all of the soups I've tried have been great. Also, the book itself is very pretty, and has several very nice decorative woodcuts throughout. This is a rare treat for anyone who has spent significant time with most vegetian cookbooks, which contain recepies so complicated and time consuming that no normal person can deal with them.