Every recipe I have made from this cookbook has come out beautiful. Not only do the recipes create great flavor, but they are different from any other source of soup recipes that I have found. The author has a talent for combining ingredients to create a vibrant taste to the senses.

I love this book. Not just for the recipes but for the clean design and beautiful photographs. Everything about this book makes you want to use it over and over.

I do have one word of caution. Her miso soup recipe calls for you to boil the miso. She makes an effort to explain how beneficial miso is for your health but unfortunately, boiling miso destroys all of the good enzymes.

Add it at the end by turning off the heat, mix in your miso, and wait a few minutes before serving. Heat activates the enzymes but, again, boiling will destroy them.

Aside from this small detail, it is one of my favorites amoung my vast collection of cookbooks.

I love this book. Not just for the recipes but for the clean design and beautiful photographs. Everything about this book makes you want to use it over and over.

I do have one word of caution. Her miso soup recipe calls for you to boil the miso. She makes an effort to explain how beneficial miso is for your health but unfortunately, boiling miso destroys all of the good enzymes.

Add it at the end by turning off the heat, mix in your miso, and wait a few minutes before serving. Heat activates the enzymes but, again, boiling will destroy them.

This book is the perfect soup cook book. I really love soup and wanted some new and interesting recipes. This book definitely delivered! I have tried many of the recipes and all of them were delicious. Each recipe is very unique and my favorite so far is the roasted vegetable soup. The roasting causes a sweetness and carmelization that is delicious and even though there are a lot of ingredients prep is quick because it is mostly just chopping up veggies.

One of my friends was recently diagnosed with Celiac Disease and this book is helping her through her tough time with her new dietary restrictions. She is not able to use any canned broths or bouillions that you could buy at the store so the vegetable stock recipe in this book is helping her to be able to eat the soups she loves again.

This is a great book!

Excellent and easy and delicious recipes for anyone who likes soup and doesn't like to go to a whole lot of trouble.

If you like soup and are a vegetarian you"ll love this book of receipes. The book itself was in great shape. Thanx Seller

I think a good cookbook should have an image for every recipe.
This cookbook has beautiful images, but I wish they would show me an image of the cooked soup instead of images of the ingredients. I know what a raspberry looks like, but I have no idea about raspberry soup.
Else than that I think that the yummy titled of the recipe make up a little bit for the lack of images, they all sound good. They are simple yet not obvious soups. They have refined ingredients, but not obscure, you can find everything at the grocery store.
My only other critique would be that the organization of the explanation is trying to simplify the flowing of the making process, but I think it is just confusing. I would like a 1-2-3 kind of book, but this one is more like a flowing text wich makes it hard to follow once you are in the kitchen with your stuff cooking fast.
Over all it seems to be a good book, full of nice little recipies. I just wish there was more images...

I have tried several recipes in this book and they have all been good. The recipes are definitely unique; for example, the spices in the Moroccan red lentil-bean stew include fennel seeds, rosemary, curry powder, and saffron. And it's really a good combination. Another unexpected combination was spicy green bean & potato stew with feta cheese. Other great recipes include the Greek spinach and orzo soup and asparagus-leek soup. I adore this cookbook.

I have read dozens of soup cookbooks and while they all had their virtues, this soup cookbook is the most original and creative I have encountered.

For example, Paula Mitchell's Avocado Soup recipe is truly divine. It can be served as written or with the addition of shrimp or crab meat. I strayed from the vegetarian theme and added a timbale of King Crab Meat to the center of the soup bowl. My guests were surprised and delighted. The flavor of the soup was ethereal. It is a wonderful first course with a delicate flavor that neither I nor my guests had encountered before.

This little book is worth its weight in gold. Serving soup as a first course is a refreshing change from the current practice of offering typically greasy individual appetizers before a meal. In addition to their value to a hostess, these soups deliver great nutritional value and many can be prepared ahead and frozen. What more could you ask?

If I could have only two soup cookbooks, this would be one of them ( I would still like to serve soups with meat) If I could have only one soup cookbook I would be very tempted to choose this one. Happily, given the reasonable price of this book, cooks don't have to choose.

I purchased this as a present for a friend who was graduating from college. He's not the most cooking-saavy individual, but the colorful pictures and clear instructions in this book made him want to begin making beautiful bowls of soup right away. Although the selection of recipes is not as wide as one might hope (more space than I would like is taken up by "dessert soups"), everything in the book is delicious and presented in creative, eye-appealing ways.

What I love about this cookbook is that not only are the recipes are delicious, but they are unique, and the ideas for presentation are great too. We especially love the recipe for Moroccan Stew. It is very flavorful, filling, and healthy, like all the recipes I have tried from this book.

It is much easier to identify very good and very bad cookbooks than it is to identify the merely good or average cookbooks. I saw the beauty of this book with the first recipe I prepared from it. I have read two other books on soup by very famous cookbook authors Barbara Kafka and James Peterson and I would recommend this little book over both of their works. Both of these other works are good, worthy of five stars, but this volume by Paulette Mitchell is better for the price.

The fact that it is limited to only vegetarian and vegan recipes detracts not one wit from its value to the general cook. If this means anything at all, it means that the recipes will be less expensive and faster to prepare than recipes including meat. It especially means that you can make an appropriate homemade vegetable stock for these recipes very cheaply and easily, with no chicken sanitary problems to deal with.

The main body of the book with the chapters of soup recipes covers:

Creamy Soups featuring curried carrot, potatoes, squash, chestnuts, bell peppers, fresh peas, and peanuts
Chunky Soups featuring black beans, red lentils, chickpeas, asparagus, miso, minestrones and ribollita.
Chilled Soups featuring Vichyssoise, borscht, lettuce soup, avocado soup, and gazpacho
Dessert Soups featuring berry-wine, strawberry-rhubarb, gingered pear, and brandied pumpkin.

The chapter on chunky soups comprises about half the recipes. It should be clear from this list that most of the major soupy players are present. The only major type of soup one may miss is seafood chowders. For that, you can go to Jasper White's excellent book, '50 Chowders'.

Many recipes are vegetarian in that they include some dairy product; however, the author gives many tips on making the daried soups suitable to a vegan sensibility. The primary technique is to substitute soymilk for cow's milk and toasted breadcrumbs for grated cheese.

Before the main chapters of recipes, there is a short chapter on preparing vegetable stock. The book ends with an excellent chapter of recipes for `garnishes and accompaniments' which gives recipes for pestos, croutons, and various toasted nibbles. Many recipes also include a garnish which may easily be treated as a recipe in itself and a garnish from one soup can be grafted onto the serving of some other soup.

Aside from the excellent selection of recipes for soups and supporting cast, the recipes are written in a very appealing format. Rather than undistinguished text or simple numbered steps, the steps are broken down into major activities, with numerous checkpoints to indicate where in the preparation it would be best to freeze or how to do parts of the preparation in advance. Soup and garnish steps and ingredient lists are always separate to easily mix and match soup with garnish.

The book is loaded with tips relevant to the particular recipe, but which are also relevant to general cooking techniques. To this end, the author has provided a separate list of alphabetized names of tips, so that if you wish to use crème fraiche in a recipe but you have forgotten the recipe, simply look it up in the tips list. Surely, the index would do as well, except that it would not be as easy to browse the tip titles and let serendipity take its course.

To top it all off, this is a very attractively composed book. The pictures are not abundant. Only about one in ten recipes has an accompanying photograph, but all pics are done in a way which compliments the overall design of the book. The plain black typesetting is possibly not as elegant as the kind of treatment it may have gotten from Knopf, but it is a very nicely designed book. The literary quotes headlined by a famous quote on soup by Lewis Carroll sprinkled here and there simply add to the pleasant experience.

One advantage to meatless recipes is that they will take less time to prepare; however, I do wish to soft pedal the author's suggestion that the recipes are fast and easy. If you make both soup and garnish, you may be dealing with more than one separate steam, saute, or blanche step. Cream soups will require breaking out the food processor, blender, or stick blender. Chunky soups will require a fair amount of knife work. But, don't hold this against this or any other book. Just don't buy it with the notion that you are buying a fast recipe book.

Very highly recommended especially for the price. Not fast, but easy for novices.

It is much easier to identify very good and very bad cookbooks than it is to identify the merely good or average cookbooks. I saw the beauty of this book with the first recipe I prepared from it. I have read two other books on soup by very famous cookbook authors Barbara Kafka and James Peterson and I would recommend this little book over both of their works. Both of these other works are good, worthy of five stars, but this volume by Paulette Mitchell is better for the price.

The fact that it is limited to only vegetarian and vegan recipes detracts not one wit from its value to the general cook. If this means anything at all, it means that the recipes will be less expensive and faster to prepare than recipes including meat. It especially means that you can make an appropriate homemade vegetable stock for these recipes very cheaply and easily, with no chicken sanitary problems to deal with.

The main body of the book with the chapters of soup recipes covers:

Creamy Soups featuring curried carrot, potatoes, squash, chestnuts, bell peppers, fresh peas, and peanuts
Chunky Soups featuring black beans, red lentils, chickpeas, asparagus, miso, minestrones and ribollita.
Chilled Soups featuring Vichyssoise, borscht, lettuce soup, avocado soup, and gazpacho
Dessert Soups featuring berry-wine, strawberry-rhubarb, gingered pear, and brandied pumpkin.

The chapter on chunky soups comprises about half the recipes. It should be clear from this list that most of the major soupy players are present. The only major type of soup one may miss is seafood chowders. For that, you can go to Jasper White's excellent book, '50 Chowders'.

Many recipes are vegetarian in that they include some dairy product; however, the author gives many tips on making the daried soups suitable to a vegan sensibility. The primary technique is to substitute soymilk for cow's milk and toasted breadcrumbs for grated cheese.

Before the main chapters of recipes, there is a short chapter on preparing vegetable stock. The book ends with an excellent chapter of recipes for `garnishes and accompaniments' which gives recipes for pestos, croutons, and various toasted nibbles. Many recipes also include a garnish which may easily be treated as a recipe in itself and a garnish from one soup can be grafted onto the serving of some other soup.

Aside from the excellent selection of recipes for soups and supporting cast, the recipes are written in a very appealing format. Rather than undistinguished text or simple numbered steps, the steps are broken down into major activities, with numerous checkpoints to indicate where in the preparation it would be best to freeze or how to do parts of the preparation in advance. Soup and garnish steps and ingredient lists are always separate to easily mix and match soup with garnish.

The book is loaded with tips relevant to the particular recipe, but which are also relevant to general cooking techniques. To this end, the author has provided a separate list of alphabetized names of tips, so that if you wish to use crýme fraiche in a recipe but you have forgotten the recipe, simply look it up in the tips list. Surely, the index would do as well, except that it would not be as easy to browse the tip titles and let serendipity take its course.

To top it all off, this is a very attractively composed book. The pictures are not abundant. Only about one in ten recipes has an accompanying photograph, but all pics are done in a way which compliments the overall design of the book. The plain black typesetting is possibly not as elegant as the kind of treatment it may have gotten from Knopf, but it is a very nicely designed book. The literary quotes headlined by a famous quote on soup by Lewis Carroll sprinkled here and there simply add to the pleasant experience.

One advantage to meatless recipes is that they will take less time to prepare; however, I do wish to soft pedal the author's suggestion that the recipes are fast and easy. If you make both soup and garnish, you may be dealing with more than one separate steam, saute, or blanche step. Cream soups will require breaking out the food processor, blender, or stick blender. Chunky soups will require a fair amount of knife work. But, don't hold this against this or any other book. Just don't buy it with the notion that you are buying a fast recipe book.

Very highly recommended especially for the price. Not fast, but easy for novices.