The revolutionary approach of Starting with Ingredients will transform the way we shop, prepare, cook, and even think about food. Each chapter focuses on a single ingredient. The accompanying recipes in Chef Aliza Green’s culinary tour de force demonstrate the broad range of possibilities for each ingredient, utilizing avariety of cooking methods, flavors, and ethnic inspirations. This innovative work is the product of Green’s ceaseless culinary curiosity and in-depth knowledge of ingredients. With these tools, she has created hundreds of clear and imaginative recipes that will enable experienced and fledgling home chefs to recognize how foods should look and behave, their fragrance and feel, their seasonal changes, how they are transformed by different cooking methods, and their flavor affinities. Extensive sidebars satisfy the most curious epicure.

Reviews
"Ingredient-based" cooking is the buzzword for the way savvy cooks think about food. This hefty new book has 100 chapters on ingredients from almonds to — yes! — zucchini. There's advice on buying and storing eggs, then recipes for soufflés and Spanish tortillas, baked eggs Florentine, and huevos rancheros. This is a book for anyone who's ready to cook based on the ingredients at hand, or who goes out of the way to find perfect aged cheese and who can spend hours at the greenmarket selecting the crispest green beans.
—Irene Sax, Epicurious.com's "The Best Cookbooks of 2006"

It's good for the biceps (it has 1,055 pages) and it's a great reference and cookbook by a chef who knows a thing or thousand about cooking. "She knows what she's talking about," says McIntosh.
"The best cookbooks for holiday presents"
—Mia Stainsby, Vancouver Sun

Aliza Green's "Starting With Ingredients," in particular, sent us running to the test kitchen; you'll find some of her recipes here. … Akin to a Google recipe search, only authoritative, reliable — and with context. Organized by ingredients, with hundreds of tips and recipes, plus a killer index. For people who appreciate one-stop shopping and a new recipe source.
—Bonnie S. Benwick, Washington Post
"Gift Cookbooks: Bigger's Not Always Better"

You can never have enough cookbooks, especially ones as interesting as Starting with Ingredients: Quintessential Recipes for the Way We Really Cook (Running Press, $39.95; alizagreen.com) by Aliza Green, one of Philadelphia's pioneering chefs. This 1,000-plus page book boasts 100 chapters, each focusing on an individual ingredient, describing its unique attributes and offering an array of cooking methods. Green hasn't forgotten her Jewish roots and includes recipes for Mushroom-Barley Soup, Grandma's Chicken Soup with Matzo Balls and Kasha Varnishes, among others.
—Jewish Woman, "8 Chanukah Gifts with Character"

"Culinary ABCs"
Aliza Green’s new book Starting With Ingredients is a three-course feast for foodies. Subtitled “Quintessential Recipes for the Way We Really Cook,” this encyclopedia is an opus of info, tips, and recipes — encyclopedic because of its length (over 1,000 pages) and format: The book contains 100 chapters, each devoted to one specific ingredient.
The chapter on cheese, for example, opens with a listing of what will be covered — cheeses, ingredients, techniques, etc. — followed by detailed descriptions of several popular cheeses and the best ways to incorporate them when you cook. Then comes the yummy part: several of Green’s recipes, like Shaker Herb and Cheddar Cheese Soup and Farmhouse Cheddar Welsh Rabbit.
For home cooks who aren’t quite sure what to do with the unique ingredients they’ve found at the local market, this book is as essential as salt and pepper.
—USAirways November issue