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Greetings

Can anyone recommend some good vegetarian cookbook - particularly vegan? I have some Moosewood cookbooks I really like but am looking for some new books.

Thanks!!

[Suzanne]

Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone has a wealth of recipes, many of them okay for vegans. Plus tons of information about ingredients, techniques.

Published by Broadway Books, 1997, ISBN 0-7679-0014-6

[Isa]

If you like ethnic cuisine you can try:

Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian

The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook by Jack Bishop


For more suggestion check
Amazon's vegetable & vegetarian section..

[CompassRose]

I don't much care for the older Moosewood cookbooks at all; I find them very "old school" vegetarian, with way too much cheese standing in for the meat, and lots of heavy, don't-move-after-eating casseroles. Very hippie seventies hearty granola cookin'. I like ... is it Moosewood Restaurant Low Fat Favourites, and the Sunday Afternoon Whatever cookbook. I do favour "healthy" low fat cooking... but I also like plenty of flavour, and I find the older cookbooks very unadventurous, for the most part.

My current favourite vegetarian (actually vegan) cookbook is The Millennium Cookbook, from the San Francisco restaurant. This is fabulous, fabulous food - a bit fussy, but guaranteed to impress, and bursting with great tastes. (It also has a chapter with deadly good vegan desserts by Sascha Weiss.)

I also like Mollie Katzen's Vegetable Heaven, which, like Millennium, is much more modern, flavourful, adventurous.

Others that are in steady rotation in my kitchen are Steven Raichlen's High Flavour, Low Fat Vegetarian Cooking, The Vegetarian Times Cookbook (fairly good standard reference, but seasonings tend to be a little on the timid side), and Nava Atlas' Vegetarian Celebrations. For plain comfort-food things, I like Bryanna Clark Grogan's books and Cooking with Peta, which are both vegan.

I do like Madhur Jaffrey, too, but I find her recipes usually have at least double the amount of salt they need... I leave seasonings as is, but ALWAYS cut the salt until I taste. Julie Sahni has also written a good vegetarian East Indian cookbook, the title of which escapes me.

There's a really good series, I've got a couple (Japanese and Mexican) which is, I think, called World Vegetarian; single books, each focussing on one country's cuisine.

[ziggy]

Thanks for all the responses. Will look for the books mentioned.

I have the Sunday's Moosewood Cookbook...that's my favorite of theirs as well...

We're also doing weight watchers so anything with a healthy, lower fat bent is an added plus!

[Shimmer]

I always go to the library, which surprisingly has millions of vegetarian cookbooks. One of my favorites so far was
"Versatile Vegetarian." I didn't realize until I got it home that it was put out by Weight Watchers, but the recipes I've tried have been excellent. I especially recommend the Indian Tomato-Lentil Soup.

An interesting book using seasonal recipes and actual vegetables (how many vegetarian books do we need with recipes for pasta?) is "Food for the Spirit" by Manuela Dunn Mascetti and Arunima Borthwick.

My Mom finds really interesting vegetarian cookbooks from the early 1980s at garage sales and sends them to me. By far the most interesting was "The Higher Taste: A Guide to Gourmet Vegetarian Cooking and a Karma- Free Diet," put out by the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, where garlic and onions are also excluded.

Another helpful one for me when having to cook for a vegetarian who thinks he hates tofu has been "This Can't Be Tofu" by Deborah Madison. Sesame tofu has had great results.

So many vegetarian cookbooks are tied into religious groups, which I find really interesting. An interesting one to read (which I never cooked out, of because I didn't have ANY of the ingredients!) was "Three Bowl Cookbook : The Secrets of Enlightened Cooking from the Zen Mountain." It combines simplicity with vegetarian cooking, which sometimes is not the case!

If you want to try an interesting extreme, look at "Raw: the Uncook Book." My mother-in-law and her boyfriend went for a while eating entirely raw foods. It's interesting, and would definitely be vegan. The milks are made from nuts or grains, as are the breads, crackers, chips, everything.

Hope this helps,
~~Shimmer~

[ziggy]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I actually happened across Deborah Madison's "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" at Costco of all places tonight...so picked it up.

Will definitely look for the others suggested as well...thanks again!

[Ruth]

have you considered books on tapas? many are veggie driven you should be able to find some interesting food items.

[Jim]

The Vegetarian Epicure books 1 & 2, by Anna Thomas. I'll concede they are old (very), but they offer a wealth of information. Good 'foundation' reading.

[solanna]

Ill second the vote for Deborah Madison's--Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. I also have her book, The Savory Way, which is also super. The Canyon Ranch Spa Cookbook -'Canyon Ranch Cooking" is beautiful and has a bunch of healthy vegan and vegetarian recipes.

Also, as a side note...The William-Sonoma TASTE magazine always has some good vegetarian action.

-h

[CompassRose]

Oh, yeah, magazines! I really like Veggie Life. I've got some good older issues of VT (Vegetarian Times) but I don't know what the hang they're up to these days. For awhile, it was Health Consciousness, with Veggieness falling by the wayside. Now, though they still put nutritional analyses on their recipes, the figures have been such that I'm starting to doubt the Healthy Lifestyles mode too. It's completely unfocussed - a not-even-very-good cooking magazine with lots of rather timid recipes containing everything of the beast but the beast. Bah.

I've never seen the Williams-Sonoma mag. Guess they don't sell it in Canada.

I don't much care for the Vegetarian Epicure books. "Take 2 cups of heavy cream. Add 8 ounces cream cheese, 12 eggs, 4 sticks butter and 4 cups grated Gruyere. Oh, yeah, and a potato or two. Bake."

[solanna]

Here is where you can get more info on it, and sign up for it if you want to...
Taste Magazine page on William-Sonoma Site

It looks like they don't ship to Canada, but for anyone else that is interested...I think I paid $20 for my subscription, I think it is currently a quarterly publication...It looks like they have a promotion going right now for $12 or there are those cards in the magazine this month that let you buy one get one free, so you can send one to a friend for the holidays ($20-or $10 per...) The food photography in this magazine is amazing.

h

[Isa]

Originally posted by CompassRose
I've never seen the Williams-Sonoma mag. Guess they don't sell it in Canada.

They do sell it Rose, I've seen it at Indigo and in newsstands.