Vegetarian recipes for everyone: even omnivores will love these

Published in 2014, this book is an update of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, which came out in 1997. The new volume is hefty (more than 600 pages) and not for those who want to know what the dishes are supposed to look like (there are no pictures).

In the introduction, American author, chef and cooking teacher Deborah Madison, who lives in New Mexico, writes that atti­tudes towards vegetarianism have changed a lot since the original volume was published.

“At that time, vegetarian cooking was something from the fringe, and some foods, like soy milk, for example, were downright obscure and could be purchased only at tiny health food stores. I wondered why some foods had to be hidden – couldn’t they be brought forward and included as ingredients, along with other foods, in one place? As it turned out, they could.

“For some time now, once-obscure foods have filled our super­markets’ shelves – they’re even found at gas stations and convenience stores […] those foods that were once scarcely known are now every­day items, and new ones have appeared. In addition, our knowledge about what makes up the foods we eat has deepened, and some foods that were once viewed in such a positive way are now regarded more dubiously. Soy, for example, is not quite the star we once thought it was, and today the empha­sis has shifted to ferment­ed soy, not the more com­mon forms, as important.”

It’s surprising to learn that someone who wrote such an important book on vegetarian food actually eats meat – but that was her reason for writing it in the first place.