Product Description

In her most comprehensive volume yet, Madhur Jaffrey draws on more than four decades of culinary adventures, travels, and experimentation for a diverse collection that both intrigues and delights the palate. Dishes from five continents touch on virtually all the world's best loved flavors, for a unsurpassed selection of vegetarian fare.
        
More than 650 recipes exemplify Madhur's unsurpassed ability to create simple, flavorful homecooking that is well within the reach of every cook. Extensive sections on Beans, Vegetables, Grains, and Dairy explore the myriad ways these staples are enjoyed worldwide. Each section opens with a detailed introduction; Madhur describes methods for preparation and storage, as well as different cooking techniques and their cultural origins. Throughout she balances appealing, uncomplicated dishes such as sumptuous omelets and rich polentas with less familiar ingredients such as green mangoes, pigeon peas, and spelt. Madhur demystifies the latter with clear-cut explanations so that incorporating new combinations and interesting flavors into everyday cooking becomes second nature. She also offers substantial sections on Soups, Salads, and Drinks, as well as Sauces and Other Flavorings, to help round out a meatless meal and add exciting new flavors to even the most easily prepared dishes. Finally, a complete glossary of ingredients and techniques clarifies some of the little-known elements of the world's cuisines so that even the uninitiated can bring the flavors of Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and more to their tables.
        
Throughout this extensive collection, Madhur includes personal anecdotes and historical contexts that bring her recipes to life, whether she's remembering field of leeks she saw in the mountains of northern Greece or describing how corn-based dishes arrived in Indonesia through colonial trade. Committed vegetarians will rejoice at the wide variety of meatless fare she offers, and nonvegetarians will enjoy experimenting with Madhur's global flavorings. This highly readable resource promises to be a valuable addition to any cook's library, helping everyone make healthful ethnic foods a part of everyday cooking.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21362 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-15
• Released on: 2002-01-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 768 pages

Amazon.com Review
The author of seven previous cookbooks, including the classic Indian Cooking, Madhur Jaffrey is among today's most influential and authoritative food writers. Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian, a meticulously researched collection of more than 750 meatless dishes from around the globe, presents its author in superlative form, culling the best vegetarian home-style dishes from virtually every culture and cooking tradition. Jaffrey's book, filled with delicious, approachable recipes, has universal appeal, and should be part of every cook's library.

Divided into sections on beans, grains, and vegetables, and including chapters on vegetables, soups, salads, and sauces, among other topics, the book brilliantly juxtaposes recipes grouped by ingredient to reveal, finally, the way that ingredient is approached globally to make food. Thus, for example, Jaffrey's section on rice offers Persian Pilaf with Lima Beans, Palestinian Rice with Lentils and Browned Onions, and Risotto with Fried Porcini Mushrooms, among other pitch-perfect dish choices in this and other chapters. Less familiar ingredients like spelt, millet, and soybeans are removed from the realm of dubious interest and presented in compelling recipes, such as Spicy Soybean Patties with Mint. Throughout, Jaffrey provides definitive notes on ingredients (her full investigation of couscous types is one of many examples) and techniques, as well as a truly comprehensive glossary. Jaffrey also offers a small but charming section on drinks; her Fresh Lime and Ginger Syrup from India, to be mixed with ice and soda water, is a simple but marvelous summertime treat, and one more example of Jaffrey at excitingly full throttle. A ten-page section of color photos rounds out this expert collection. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
Jaffrey (author of the James Beard Award-winning Madhur Jaffrey's Taste of the Far East) offers an Asian-centered complement to Deborah Madison's European-focused Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. True to Jaffrey's title, the recipes here do hail from all over the world, but an Indian slant can be detected: a chapter on dried legumes contains Black-Eyed Pea Fritters from Nigeria, Boiled Peanuts Indonesian Style, and variations on Chickpea Flour Pancakes from India; a section on grains includes, among other things, the quickly made flatbreads of India, like Punjabi Village-Style Flat Whole Wheat Flaky Breads. Sometimes Jaffrey adopts vegetarian ingredients to make nonmeat versions of familiar dishes, such as a Mock Lamb Curry with seitan (wheat gluten), but more often she simply delves into the meatless tradition of a specific country and pulls up a signature dish (Savory Greek Pumpkin Pie). A chapter on dairy gives instructions for making yogurt, the Indian cheese paneer, mascarpone and other preparations, then describes a variety of ways these bases can be used (Yogurt with Green Mango or Homemade Indian Cheese Cooked in the Style of Scrambled Eggs). With its top-notch glossary of unusual ingredients and thorough information about vegetables, this is an excellent resource for those who like to make everything from scratch as well as those who want fast results. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Obviously a labor of love, Jaffrey's masterwork is breathtaking in scope, with a dazzling array of recipes from all over the world. Grouped mostly into broad categories by main ingredient (beans, grain, vegetables, etc.), they are as likely to come from a Palestinian restaurant in Toronto, the nuns at the Ormylia Monastery in Macedonia, or a home cook in Mexico as from Jaffrey's own Indian background or her experience as a cooking teacher. There is a separate chapter on Soups, Salads, and Drinks and a short but especially good one on Sauces and Other Flavorings. Jaffrey's recipes are always delicious, and her culinary explorations and insights make for delightful reading. A good complement to Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (LJ 9/15/97) and certainly not limited in appeal to vegetarians, this is an essential purchase.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Favorite Book
A friend let me borrow this book for a dinner party I was having. I loved it so much I needed my own copy. This book is great and my kids like the recipes. I like that you can cook foods by their country of origins. I have lots of themed dinner parties so this works well for me, and an added bonus is a little geography lesson for my kids!

Great Variety
This is my second favorite vegetarian cookbook, after Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home. I have several of Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks and I always find that preparation instructions are easy to follow, the recipes work as described, and that her suggestions for substitutions or variations are right on the mark. This book is particularly enjoyable to browse, as the recipes are broken into sections (vegetables, grains) then sorted based on the dominant ingredient (cauliflower, pasta). If you buy this book, you will find that you can cut the amount of oil recommended for most recipes to 2/3 or 1/2 of the suggested amount and things will still come out fine. Many of the recipes can be used as side dishes if you need to cook for a meat-eating crowd. There are no "duds" in this book as far as I can tell.

Perhaps my absolute favorite cookbook
I belong to a CSA, so I get a weekly box of vegetables for 20 weeks of the year. Whenever I want to try something new or add zing to a vegetable, one of the first places I turn is Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian. I've found dozens of keepers in this cookbook - dishes I've never really encountered elsewhere, but that intrigue my tastebuds and stretch my horizons. For example, she has a "pumpkin pie" recipe from Greece (p 293) - think spanakopita (spinach pie), not Thanksgiving custard concoctions - and it never ceases to amaze people I make it for. I use 2 to 4 recipes per week from this cookbook during the height of CSA season. I love it so much, I joke that I should start a fan club. :^)

If you belong to a CSA, get this in combo with From Asparagus to Zucchini (which is strong on basic treatments for each veggie) and you'll be golden. As others have pointed out, it is organized largely by primary ingredient, not by cuisine (Indian, Greek, Spanish, etc) or spot on the menu (appetizer, soup, main dish). But if your goal is to find ways to creatively and deliciously use up ingredients you have in the kitchen, you owe it to yourself to try this cookbook.