The Clueless Vegetarian: A Cookbook for the Aspiring Vegetarian

by Evelyn Raab

Overview

Provides more than 130 recipes for delicious vegetarian dishes.

The Clueless Vegetarian is designed for vegetarians who love good food, cooked from scratch, but also want to have a life. If you've just switched to a vegetarian diet, The Clueless Vegetarian gives you the straightforward nutritional information you need to help you make good food choices (without obsessing). Whether you're a practicing vegetarian looking for some good old fashioned cooking or someone who cooks for vegetarians, this is your guide. There are lots of hints for concocting vegetarian versions of favorite recipes, and suggestions on preparing meals for the mixed household. Included are survival tips and useful cooking advice for everyone, vegetarian or not.

Revised and updated, The Clueless Vegetarian guides the new vegetarian through a whole new kitchen experience. Every recipe is coded to easily identify recipes suited for the lacto-ovo vegetarian, the lacto-vegetarian, the vegan, the ovo-vegetarian and the occasional vegetarian.

The Clueless Vegetarian is filled with simple recipes for just about everything you might ever want to eat. There are recipes for lasagna, chili and burritos, there are curries and casseroles, hearty soups and lots of great snacks. There are even some truly decadent desserts.

The range of delicious recipes includes:

• Chunky Avocado Salsa, Black Bean Dip, Mexican Meltdown
• Creamy Carrot Soup, Minestrone Soup, Curried Red Lentil Soup
• Warm Mushroom Salad, Simple Sesame Noodle Salad
• Roasted Tomato Fettucine, Nearly Normal Shepherd's Pie
• Mexican Red Rice, Ratatoutille, and Potato Latkas
• Amazing Eggless Dairy-Free Chocolate Cake, Fruit Compote, Fabulous Fresh Fruit Sorbet Chutney

Whether you're adopting a vegetarian lifestyle, or looking to spruce up your everyday cooking style, The Clueless Vegetarian is the best possible guide to vegetarian cooking.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770853898
Publisher:	Firefly Books, Limited
Publication date:	03/29/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	216
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Evelyn Raab's popular "Cooking With Kids" column has appeared in Today's Parent magazine. She attributes her culinary expertise to her sons.

by Evelyn Raab

Read an Excerpt

Cashew Noodle Stir-fry

If you can find the thin Chinese noodles that come vacuum packed and precooked, use them in this stir-fry. They add a nice stringy, chewy texture to the dish. Otherwise use any thin pasta like spaghettini, vermicelli or capellini instead.

• 12 oz. (350 g) package thin precooked Chinese noodles
• 8 oz. (250 g) very thin pasta, vermicelli or capellini
• 1 tbsp. (15 mL) vegetable oil
• 1 cup (250 mL) cashew pieces
• 1 medium sweet green or red pepper, thinly sliced
• 2 stalks celery, sliced
• 1 (14-oz./398 mL) can baby corn cobs, drained and halved lenghtwise
• 2 cups (500 mL) fresh bean sprouts
• 4 green onions, silvered
• 1 tbsp. (15 mL) soy sauce
• 1 tbsp. (15 mL) Chinese chili paste (or less, or none)

If you are using precooked Chinese noodles, open the package and place them in a strainer. Pour boiling water over them and fluff them up with a fork. That's all. They're now ready to use.

If you are using regular pasta, cook it in plenty of boiling water until tender but not mushy, drain thoroughly, and set aside.

Heat the oil in a wok or large skillet. Add cashews, and stif-fry over high heat for 1 minute, until they are lightly golden. Now throw in the sliced green or red pepper, the celery and the baby corn, and stir-fry for about 3 minutes. Add the bean sprouts and the green onions, and cook for just one more minute, until the sprouts are beginning to wilt. Now stir in the noodles and toss to combine.

In a small bowl, stir together the soy sauce and the chili paste (if you're using it), then add to the noodle mixture, tossing just until heated through. (If you're not using the chili paste, you may want to increase the amount of soy sauce). Serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1. Vegetarian Survival Skills

2. Appetizers, Snacks and Starters

3. Soups from Scratch

4. Serious Salads and Dynamic Dressings

Serious Salads
Dynamic Dressings

5. Exceptional Eggs and Perfect Pancakes

Exceptional Eggs
Perfect Pancakes

6. Marvelous Main Dishes

Perfect Pastas and Splendid Sauces
Stir-Fry Crazy
Chilis, Curries, Casseroles and Concoctions
Deeply Personal Pizzas
Random Delights

7. Sidekicks

All Kinds of Grains: The Basics
Vegetables on the Side

8. Baked Stuff

9. Just Desserts

Preface

Introduction

So you're a vegetarian. Or you're thinking about it. Or maybe you live with a vegetarian.

But you don't want to eat only weird food. Or spend all day cooking it. Congratulations, you've come to the right place.

The Clueless Vegetarian is designed for vegetarians who love good food cooked from scratch but who also want to have a life. This book is filled with simple recipes for just about everything you might ever want to eat and a few things you wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. You'll find recipes for lasagna and chili and burritos. There are curries and casseroles. There are hearty soups and satisfying snacks. There are even some truly decadent desserts.

There are, of course, also recipes for tofu, tempeh and textured vegetable protein (TVP). Because you should know about this stuff. Really.

If you're just switching to a vegetarian diet, The Clueless Vegetarian gives you the straightforward nutritional information you need to help you make good food choices--without obsessing over it. There are hints for concocting vegetarian versions of some of your favorite dishes and suggestions for preparing meals for the mixed household. You'll even find survival tips and cooking advice that's just plain useful for anyone, vegetarian or not.

Now let's start with the basics, shall we? We'll save the tempeh for later. It's best to work up to these things gradually.

Editorial Reviews

Filled with fun and clever tips and hints to make meat-free cooking fun and exciting.
— (September 6, 2000)

Valparasiso Vidette Times

The organization is wonderful ... tips on eating out and basic definitions of weird-sounding foods make this very user friendly.
—(Tucson Arizona Daily Star, September 10, 2000)

Valerie Vinyard

Despite her simple approach, Raab's recipes reflect a range of cooking styles and cater to today's multiethnic tastes.
—Booklist, October 2000

Mark Knoblauch

[An] educational cookbook ...the straightforward language and user friendly format are sure to appeal to teens.

Dana Vance

Even if you don't want to go vegetarian but want to lighten your diet, this book can be a useful tool.

Playboy

This vegetarian cookbook feels like a flashback to a time when vegetarianism was a virtually unknown lifestyle choice. A nutritional pyramid revised for vegetarians is helpful, but advice for vegetarians who wish to face the "challenge" of dining out sounds dire (suggestions include pizza, Indian, Chinese and sticking to salad and bread). In general, not eating meat is presented as problematic and strange, with recipe titles like Seemingly Normal Chocolate Pudding (made with soy milk) and Nearly Normal Shepherd's Pie. The latter, like many of the recipes, feels like a throwback with its filling of vegetables, ketchup, and TVP (texturized vegetable protein). It's not that Gazillion Bean Salad, made with canned beans, and Zucchini and Basil Strata aren't good, but they're '70s classics, not new ideas. A section on crepes hearkens back to a good idea that is often overlooked, and a few pizzas--such as Pizza with Sweet and Sour Caramelized Onions--bring back the '80s. Raab employs a tone more suited to her earlier effort, Clueless in the Kitchen, which was geared to teens. For example, she describes Mexican Meltdown as a "wonderfully gloppy cheesy goop," and the headnote to Sweet and Sour Roasted Beet Salad promises: "Remember those yucky gluey beets with the sweet sauce you always hated? Well, this is not them. Totally." (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This cookbook makes eating vegetarian an appealing meal alternative for everyone.

Canadian Women's Health Network

The person who wants to give up meat completely or the one who simply wants to eat a few meatless meals now and then couldn't get a better start than with The Clueless Vegetarian.

Appleton Post-Crescent - Myrna Collins

The organization is wonderful ... tips on eating out and basic definitions of weird-sounding foods make this very user friendly.

Tucson Arizona Daily Star - Valerie Vinyard