The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook

Unless you eat only meat at every meal, you will enjoy this inspired, beautifully designed, comprehensive guide to vegetarian eating and cooking. I picked it up to get some ideas for dishes to please both our vegetarian daughter and omnivorous others, and couldn’t put the book down. It’s packed with information about nutrition, health, and meal planning; has charts and tables and chatty sidebars full of neat facts and ideas about food; and has a sizeable appendix describing ingredients, sources, tools, and cooking methods. On top of all that, if offers more than 600 recipes for low-fat vegetarian dishes to take you from breakfast right through bed-time snacks.

The personality of the author shines through every page. In the process of writing the book, she survived several calamities, including a fire that destroyed her house, and celebrated the birth of her son (her account of her "pregnancy diet" on page 19 is not to be missed), while managing to keep her sense of humor.

The following sample recipes give you a hint of the varied offerings of this useful and fun-to-read cookbook. The only adaptation I made to some of the recipes I tried was to add some fat back in for fuller flavor, but the recipes are presented here as written in the book.

Sample Recipes:

Spicy Tofu with Eggplant and Peppers

Place the tofu in a pie plate. Cover with several sheets of paper towel, and put a heavy pot on top. Set aside for an hour. When it has been pressed, discard the liquid and cut the tofu into small (1/2") cubes.

Line a colander with paper towels and place the eggplant inside. Sprinkle with salt and toss gently. Set aside for 30 minutes.

Heat the oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion, scallions, garlic, and ginger. Lower the heat to medium and sauté until soft, about 8 minutes. Rinse the eggplant lightly, just enough to get the salt off the surface, and pat it dry. Add to the skillet along with the peppers, mustard seeds, basil, cilantro, cumin, coriander, turmeric, curry powder, tomato paste, lemon juice, and pressed tofu. Sauté, stirring often, until the eggplant is cooked through, about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Serves 6.

Orange and Cilantro Bean Salad

1-1/2 cups cooked black runner beans, or canned black beans, drained and rinsed
1 navel orange, peeled, sectioned, and cut into bite-size pieces
2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered
2 scallions, white part only, chopped
1/4 cup minced fresh cilantro
4 oil-cured green olives, minced
Combine all ingredients in a glass or ceramic bowl. Toss well.

Dressing:
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Whisk together and pour over the salad. Toss well. Serve at once. Serves 4.

Angel-Hair Pasta with Asparagus and Cherry Tomatoes

Heat the oil in a medium skillet and sauté the garlic, shallot, parsley, and mint over medium heat, until the shallot has softened. Add the cherry tomatoes and cook, stirring often, until the tomatoes cook down into a pulpy sauce, about 7 minutes. Stir in the asparagus tips, cover, and let them cook until they’re bright green and just cooked through, about 3 minutes. Remove from the heat.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain in a colander and toss with the sauce. Distribute evenly on serving plate and sprinkle with the cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Makes 2 servings as a main dish, 4 as a side dish.

Bulgur and Red Lentil Soup

Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy saucepan. Add the onions, dill, and chives, and sauté, stirring often, until the onions are so soft they’re nearly melting, about 20 minutes. Add the lentils and bulgur and stir to coat them with the herbs, about 1 minute. Add the water and broth, if using, stir well, and bring the soup to a simmer over medium-high heat. Cover, lower the heat to medium-low, and cook until the bulgur and lentils are tender, about 20 minutes. Add the chickpeas and the greens, and stir until the leaves turn bright green, about 2 minutes.

Remove the soup from the heat and let it cool for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Put the yogurt in a large mixing bowl. Add 1 tablespoon of the hot soup and stir. Add and another spoonful and stir. Continue to transfer the soup into the yogurt until you’ve blended two-thirds of the soup with the yogurt. Stir well and return the mixture to the soup pot. Heat carefully over low heat, stirring to warm through. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Cinnamon-Raisin Rolls

Heat oven to 400°F. Place the raisins in a small bowl and cover with boiling water. Set aside. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flours and baking powder. In a food processor, puree the cottage cheese until smooth. Add the granulated sugar, buttermilk, and vanilla. Process again until smooth. Add the flour mixture and process in short pulses just until a dough forms, about 4 to 5 pulses.

Dust a flat work surface with flour. Pat the dough into a ball. Place it in the center of the work surface and roll it out into a rectangle, about 10" by 12".

Combine the brown sugar and cinnamon, and sprinkle evenly over the dough. Drain the raisins and distribute them over the dough. Roll the dough up from the long side as if it were a jelly roll. Slice it into 8 slices.

Place the pieces flat on a nonstick baking sheet. Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Leave the rolls on the baking sheet and cool on a rack for 5 minutes. Serve warm. To store, let the rolls cool completely. Seal them inside a plastic bag and refrigerate or freeze. Makes 8 rolls.