Barbara Kafka has been shaping the way America cooks for three decades. She’s doing it again.

With her customary originality, thoroughness, and passion for great cooking, Barbara Kafka has created the cook’s ultimate vegetable resource: 750 original recipes showcasing everything she adores about the vegetable world, from the lowly green bean to the exotic chrysanthemum leaf -- even stretching the definition to include potatoes, mushrooms, and avocados just because she’s crazy mad for them.

Her love of vegetables shows in every dish, each impeccably researched, consistently foolproof, and put to the Kafka taste test. Among these delectable dishes are dozens of essays, including personal reflections on the garden and migrations in the vegetable world, for example; all are erudite and unfailingly entertaining.

Kafka’s book within a book -- an at-a-glance, we’ve-done-all-the-work-for-you Cook’s Guide -- provides practical, encyclopedic information on how to buy, measure, substitute, and prepare every food that ever called itself a vegetable.