Probably my favourite cookbook. Madhur's recipes quite simply work. This book includes over 600 recipes from around the globe. Shows the full variety and interest of vegetarian cooking.

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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.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19382 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-15
• Released on: 2002-01-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 768 pages

Amazon.com
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.

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Customer Reviews

Scrumptious!
World vegetarian recipes? Yes, but with a definite preference for West Indian and North African. This is a superbly written source book for Ethnic vegetarian dishes. Items needed for each recipe are clearly cited. Directions are simple and directly stated. Brief information about what gives each Ethnic food its distinctive flavor makes for good reading. The results of even an inexperienced cook are scrumptious.

The Ultimate Veggie Cookbook
This cookbook is perfect for people who like
to cook vegetable preparations. The author
presents very detailed recipes for virtually
every kind of bean in creation; namely,
Azuki, Garbanzos, Fava, Mung, Soybeans,
and Urad.

Here is a sample recipe for Star Fried Azuki beans
with Green Pepper from Yunnan, China:
o Red Azuki beans
o Black Mushrooms
o Scallions
o Garlic Cloves
o Green Pepper
o Soy
o Sesame Oil
o sugar ( I prefer ground Anise for diabetics)

All-in-all , the book is an excellent choice.
There are areas where readers can improvise on the
recommended ingredients to customize meals to
individual needs.

This Carnivore's Desert-Island-Cookbook
I am a meat-eater with a decent-sized collection of cookbooks (70+ books) and Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian has been my favorite since I cooked my first few recipes from it 8 years ago. The recipes are interesting, original and consistently delicious-- and there are so many recipes that eight years later it is still easy to find new ones I am excited to try.

I'm still learning from this book, which gives delightful small bits of new information with each section and with nearly every recipe. I'd never had a spelt berry or a curry leaf before this book -- a shame! I'd certainly never heard of a "Double," a delicious Trinidadian chickpea-based burger sandwich, and I doubt I would have ever been so adventurous as to try an egg curry (in fact, the idea of an egg curry used to seem quite unappealing to me). But the Doubles, the Goan Egg Curry, the Winter Squash Stuffed with Spelt Berries, and Figs with Mustard Seeds and Curry Leaves are some of my favorite recipes in the book.

Other favorites include: a Chinese "Bean Curd with Tomatoes and Cilantro," "Sri Lankan Eggplant Curry," a French inspired "Mushroom and Potato Stew" and "Israeli Couscous with Asparagus and Fresh Mushrooms" with fresh morel mushrooms--mmmm! I could go on and on, but I hope this list gives a sense of the wonderful variety in this book.

Some of the recipes are time-consuming but many are relatively quick, taking sensible short cuts that do not compromise quality. My husband and I have found recipes in other cookbooks for some of the Indian dishes in World Vegetarian, and those of the other books seem much more complicated and daunting.

This book is also a great one for entertaining. The recipes range from very elegant to casual, and Jaffrey often gives suggestions for what to serve with each dish. My husband and I have received a number of compliments at dinner parties (oh, I know one usually does, but these guests seemed sincere and went back for seconds and thirds) and we've just been really pleased.

The book is also consistent in quality. I'd say 92% of the recipes we've made in the book have been A or A+s. The rest are mainly B/B+ and the lowest score has been a B-. No duds! I don't have another cookbook that scores nearly that well-- usually I encounter at least one or two recipes that just don't work and feel like they were just thrown in as filler.

I own a few other Jaffrey cookbooks: Quick and Easy Indian, Indian Cooking and World of the East. They are very good, and I continue to cook from them, but if I could only have one Jaffrey book (or only one cookbook for that matter) it would be World Vegetarian. It is an absolute masterpiece. I highly recommend it.