by Erik Krause
In order to learn more about vegetarian cooking, I purchased a copy of Crescent Dragonwagon's "Passionate Vegetarian". I really liked her style and the personal touches in her descriptions of foods and her experiences related to the recipes. It is a fun book, with a huge number of recipes. Fortunately she includes a section on preparing meals quickly. Much of the book contains extensive from-scratch recipes, which can take a really long time to prepare if you aren't practiced in the kitchen. Plan to spend some long Saturday afternoons preparing excellent fare. It gets easier after a while.
Prior to this book, my experience with vegetables was only as a side dish. I wanted to learn to have a feel for what I could make given a collection of ingredients. To me, that's where the real value is. Skill at following a recipe is fine, but skill at making good things out of a random assortment of ingredients from the pantry, refrigerator and garden is what I would really like to have. It's been a great process for me, and this book has been the biggest contributor to my vegetarian experience. I can now manage to make a complete meal (including dessert) from scratch in a matter of hours and have everything come out at the same time, if typically an hour later than I initially thought. It is a true joy, particularly if you love making special creations in the kitchen.
My most-used recipe from the book is "Southwestern Succotash with Barley and Green Chiles." It's a great recipe which makes a lot and freezes well. My one adjustment is to use ground cumin instead of cumin seeds. I don't like chewing up whole seeds in the finished dish. It is a great all-around recipe. Barley works well with the corn and lima beans. I have substituted soy beans for lima beans on several occasions when there were no lima beans available. The recipe calls for sour cream or yogurt, or a vegan equivalent. I have also used cheddar cheese when I didn't have sour cream. Either ingredient really completes the taste of the dish.
Another recipe I have made several times is "Gigi Hamilton's Really Hot, Really Delectable Mixed Beans with a Lot of Ginger." The title is a very accurate description. This is a wonderful recipe. It calls for a quarter cup of grated fresh ginger. Even with the size of the recipe, this is a LOT of ginger. It is great!
There are another 900 recipes to be explored beyond that. Lots of desserts and recipes for pretty much anything you'll find in the produce section at a grocery store. She talks about common variations on foods and gives tips for vegan variations, reuse of leftovers, considerations for using ingredients, and much more. I recommend this book highly.