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Cook's Encyclopedias
Cook's Encyclopedia of Vegetarian Cooking
Librarian note: An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here.
A comprehensive guide to vegetarian cooking, including ingredient guides, dozens of delicious recipes, and easy-to-follow step-by-step photographs.
A comprehensive guide to vegetarian cooking, including ingredient guides, dozens of delicious recipes, and easy-to-follow step-by-step photographs.
256 pages, Softcover
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 21, 2023
I have owned this cookbook, and a few others from this Barnes & Noble edition series, for a couple decades. They are all very attractive books, pleasing to the touch and equally pleasing to the eye, with their soft covers, compact format, and copious full-color photos. Each recipe is accompanied by a beautiful image of the finished dish, as well as one or several small pictures showing its preparation.
This was one of my first cookbooks. I have fond memories of exploring it with a vegetarian friend in college, when I was a novice cook with a hunger for culinary novelty. We had just the most basic kitchen set-up, and the dishes in this collection seemed exciting and a bit daunting to us. I distinctly remember we made the Corn Cakes with Grilled Tomatoes and the Bulgur and Fava Bean Salad. Later on I also tried the Zucchini with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and I think the Corn and Cheese Beggar's Purses. I remember liking all of these, especially the delicious Bulgur & Fava Bean Salad with French dressing, which I made from scratch and now that I'm looking closely at the picture, I realize that what the author meant by "French dressing" was vinaigrette. Well I like my version better anyway ;)
With much more cooking & eating experience under my belt and a kitchen that has everything I need, most of the recipes in this book look quite basic to me now. We've also changed our eating habits to be mostly low-carb, which means that many of the recipes in this collection no longer serve us. Therefore we decided to go through the entire book to see what still looks like it might be worth a try, and then pass it on to someone else. These are the results:
Yummy Winners (which made it into our recipe collection)
Cream of Zucchini Soup: luscious, creamy, tasty. Not sure if it is the vegetable broth we used or maybe just a learned association with the fresh thyme, but this soup has a bit of a mushroom aroma that is as surprising as it is pleasing. We've eaten this hot, warm, cold... and we can't get enough of it. Yes please!
Cheese-Topped Roast Baby Vegetables: This is more of a loose guidance than a strict recipe, and we ended up using "grown-up vegetables" because the baby varieties are hard to find. We included eggplant, zucchini, sliced mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, and bell peppers with oregano & thyme for the herbs. We set the oven to convection, in order to avoid ending up with watery veggies. The recipe was easy to make and delicious, and went great with a steak.
Wild Mushroom Soup and Grilled Goat Cheese Salad are an incredible meal combo, good as-is or paired with a nice white wine. The mushroom soup gets better with time. Next time we have a busy day coming up, we will make the soup a day or two in advance and then prepare this quick little salad when it's time to eat. Since we didn't want any bread, we fried up a creamy goat brie in the pan with a little olive oil, instead of baking it over toast as the recipe instructs. It was a divine meal. The salad dressing is to die for, and goes perfectly with the melty-crispy cheese and the greens.
Dishes that were fine to eat, but not good enough to make again
Zucchini with Sun-Dried Tomatoes was not as good as we remembered it from the first time around. Too much acid from the tomatoes overpowered the zucchini.
Gado Gado seems like a somewhat anemic version of the real thing, and we thought it needed less sprouts. We ended up googling the dish and altering the recipe to take it up a few notches. We didn't find this worth making again as written here, but were grateful for the inspiration. Also, the peanut sauce that is part of the recipe is quite good and didn't need a lot of changes. We ate the Gado Gado with chicken satay, which was a good complement to the veggies.
Broccoli & Cauliflower Gratin: steamed veggies are delicate and watery things. Slapping a cheese gratin topping onto steamed veggies does not do them any favors. The veggies needed to be roasted or baked in order for this to work, and the topping wasn't even good enough to try to rework this recipe.
Eggplant, Lemon and Caper Salad seemed like a fail-proof pick. How bad could a Mediterranean dish be? Turns out, it can be downright yucky! The eggplant was undercooked, leaving it chewy and oddly crunchy. (There's a reason people around the world cook their eggplant to a delicious caramelized mush.) Flavor-wise, this was too sour and the green olives didn't help. We ate this with spiced lamb (from a different recipe source) and the Eggplant Dip with Crisp Bread (obviously omitting the bread). The dip was okay, but lacking depth. Also, the ground almonds gave this a sticky consistency reminiscent of hummus or maybe peanut butter, which we did not care for. However, the eggplant dip did make the salad at least edible, so it has that going for it I suppose.
Festive Brussels Sprouts: the chestnuts didn't add anything to the Brussels sprouts; this was a lot of work compared to simple oven-/pan-roasted (or even microwaved) Brussels sprouts, which taste just as good.
Yucky Losers (which should be banished from the face of the Earth)
Chinese Brussels Sprouts: another recipe doing things to Brussels Sprouts that do not improve them in any way. Entirely unmemorable. We combined this dish with the delicious NYT Tea Eggs and the Szechuan Eggplant. Since we don't like deep-fried foods, we sautéed and then baked the eggplant. It was a lot of work and if we wanted to eat eggplant (which happens often in this household, if you couldn't tell) we would never choose this recipe again. The consistency was nice for an eggplant dish, but with the five spice powder I couldn't help feeling like I was spooning mushy gingerbread into my mouth. This 3-dish combo sadly made for a rather revolting meal. Had to wash the pots & dishes immediately after, and open all the windows, so we could get the smell out of the house. Eww. (The Tea Egg recipe is a keeper, though!)
Spanish Asparagus & Orange Salad was watery and bland. I wouldn't even call this a salad: it's literally just lettuce, asparagus, tomatoes, and oranges mixed together. The whole thing was not greater than the sum of its parts, and the dressing added nothing. I don't know how someone manages to take a bunch of Mediterranean flavors and make them taste like nothing, but these people did it.
Conclusion
Four stars as a beginner book, especially for those who want to broaden their veggie-eating horizons. You'll find an interesting variety of dishes that take their inspiration from around the world, without being too over the top exotic. There's nothing in this book that you can't make with what's available at your regular supermarket.
If you already have the skills and equipment to prepare a wide range of authentic "international" food, you'll probably find this unexciting and at times questionable (vegetable moussaka topped with cheddar, anyone?).
This was one of my first cookbooks. I have fond memories of exploring it with a vegetarian friend in college, when I was a novice cook with a hunger for culinary novelty. We had just the most basic kitchen set-up, and the dishes in this collection seemed exciting and a bit daunting to us. I distinctly remember we made the Corn Cakes with Grilled Tomatoes and the Bulgur and Fava Bean Salad. Later on I also tried the Zucchini with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and I think the Corn and Cheese Beggar's Purses. I remember liking all of these, especially the delicious Bulgur & Fava Bean Salad with French dressing, which I made from scratch and now that I'm looking closely at the picture, I realize that what the author meant by "French dressing" was vinaigrette. Well I like my version better anyway ;)
With much more cooking & eating experience under my belt and a kitchen that has everything I need, most of the recipes in this book look quite basic to me now. We've also changed our eating habits to be mostly low-carb, which means that many of the recipes in this collection no longer serve us. Therefore we decided to go through the entire book to see what still looks like it might be worth a try, and then pass it on to someone else. These are the results:
Yummy Winners (which made it into our recipe collection)
Cream of Zucchini Soup: luscious, creamy, tasty. Not sure if it is the vegetable broth we used or maybe just a learned association with the fresh thyme, but this soup has a bit of a mushroom aroma that is as surprising as it is pleasing. We've eaten this hot, warm, cold... and we can't get enough of it. Yes please!
Cheese-Topped Roast Baby Vegetables: This is more of a loose guidance than a strict recipe, and we ended up using "grown-up vegetables" because the baby varieties are hard to find. We included eggplant, zucchini, sliced mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, and bell peppers with oregano & thyme for the herbs. We set the oven to convection, in order to avoid ending up with watery veggies. The recipe was easy to make and delicious, and went great with a steak.
Wild Mushroom Soup and Grilled Goat Cheese Salad are an incredible meal combo, good as-is or paired with a nice white wine. The mushroom soup gets better with time. Next time we have a busy day coming up, we will make the soup a day or two in advance and then prepare this quick little salad when it's time to eat. Since we didn't want any bread, we fried up a creamy goat brie in the pan with a little olive oil, instead of baking it over toast as the recipe instructs. It was a divine meal. The salad dressing is to die for, and goes perfectly with the melty-crispy cheese and the greens.
Dishes that were fine to eat, but not good enough to make again
Zucchini with Sun-Dried Tomatoes was not as good as we remembered it from the first time around. Too much acid from the tomatoes overpowered the zucchini.
Gado Gado seems like a somewhat anemic version of the real thing, and we thought it needed less sprouts. We ended up googling the dish and altering the recipe to take it up a few notches. We didn't find this worth making again as written here, but were grateful for the inspiration. Also, the peanut sauce that is part of the recipe is quite good and didn't need a lot of changes. We ate the Gado Gado with chicken satay, which was a good complement to the veggies.
Broccoli & Cauliflower Gratin: steamed veggies are delicate and watery things. Slapping a cheese gratin topping onto steamed veggies does not do them any favors. The veggies needed to be roasted or baked in order for this to work, and the topping wasn't even good enough to try to rework this recipe.
Eggplant, Lemon and Caper Salad seemed like a fail-proof pick. How bad could a Mediterranean dish be? Turns out, it can be downright yucky! The eggplant was undercooked, leaving it chewy and oddly crunchy. (There's a reason people around the world cook their eggplant to a delicious caramelized mush.) Flavor-wise, this was too sour and the green olives didn't help. We ate this with spiced lamb (from a different recipe source) and the Eggplant Dip with Crisp Bread (obviously omitting the bread). The dip was okay, but lacking depth. Also, the ground almonds gave this a sticky consistency reminiscent of hummus or maybe peanut butter, which we did not care for. However, the eggplant dip did make the salad at least edible, so it has that going for it I suppose.
Festive Brussels Sprouts: the chestnuts didn't add anything to the Brussels sprouts; this was a lot of work compared to simple oven-/pan-roasted (or even microwaved) Brussels sprouts, which taste just as good.
Yucky Losers (which should be banished from the face of the Earth)
Chinese Brussels Sprouts: another recipe doing things to Brussels Sprouts that do not improve them in any way. Entirely unmemorable. We combined this dish with the delicious NYT Tea Eggs and the Szechuan Eggplant. Since we don't like deep-fried foods, we sautéed and then baked the eggplant. It was a lot of work and if we wanted to eat eggplant (which happens often in this household, if you couldn't tell) we would never choose this recipe again. The consistency was nice for an eggplant dish, but with the five spice powder I couldn't help feeling like I was spooning mushy gingerbread into my mouth. This 3-dish combo sadly made for a rather revolting meal. Had to wash the pots & dishes immediately after, and open all the windows, so we could get the smell out of the house. Eww. (The Tea Egg recipe is a keeper, though!)
Spanish Asparagus & Orange Salad was watery and bland. I wouldn't even call this a salad: it's literally just lettuce, asparagus, tomatoes, and oranges mixed together. The whole thing was not greater than the sum of its parts, and the dressing added nothing. I don't know how someone manages to take a bunch of Mediterranean flavors and make them taste like nothing, but these people did it.
Conclusion
Four stars as a beginner book, especially for those who want to broaden their veggie-eating horizons. You'll find an interesting variety of dishes that take their inspiration from around the world, without being too over the top exotic. There's nothing in this book that you can't make with what's available at your regular supermarket.
If you already have the skills and equipment to prepare a wide range of authentic "international" food, you'll probably find this unexciting and at times questionable (vegetable moussaka topped with cheddar, anyone?).
February 18, 2020
This is a great cookbook. I can’t remember where I picked it up, some bargain shop for sure. I have really liked every recipe I’ve tried. I’m not a vegetarian, but use it to bring more veggies into my diet. I’ve shared the zucchini soup recipe many times with friends & everyone loves it. Even my sons that despise green things love that soup. I highly recommend it for vegetarians & non-vegetarians alike.
February 6, 2011
This cookbook makes me actually want to cook stuff! Every recipe has a finished-product photo plus a couple along-the-way photos, too. I find that so extremely helpful. About half the recipes are beyond me right now, but the other half give me hope. The first few pages describe the basic ingredients to keep in a kitchen. There are 7 recipe chapters, divided in the usual way: Soups, Appetizers, Salads, Side Dishes, Light Lunches, Suppers, and Special Occasions (more complicated or time consuming dishes). No desserts to speak of, but plenty of yummy sounding and looking things to try. Just because it's vegetarian doesn't mean it tries to be strictly healthy, either. Several recipes call for frying veggies in a pot of oil.
March 23, 2021
Bought this book at a wonderful, hole-in-wall vegetarian restaurant on Victoria Island, BC on a road trip there. I am a lover of veggie meatloaf that I fell in love with at an vegan restaurant in Firenze, Italy of all places! I complemented the owner of restaurant in Victoria and they pointed me to the cookbook they used and sold this book to me with a printed recipe of their veggie meatloaf and cranberry sauce recipe.
Book starts with pantry essentials for vegetarian cooking. Then has sections for soup, appetizer, salads, side dishes, light lunches, supper, and special occasions.
Book starts with pantry essentials for vegetarian cooking. Then has sections for soup, appetizer, salads, side dishes, light lunches, supper, and special occasions.
October 1, 2011
this is an excellent cookbook. easy, tasty recipes for the most part.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews