For cookbook club this month, we cooked from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman.
Ten years ago, this breakthrough cookbook made vegetarian cooking accessible to everyone. Today, the issues surrounding a plant-based diet—health, sustainability, and ethics—continue to resonate with more and more Americans, whether or not they’re fully vegetarian. This new edition has been completely reviewed and revised to stay relevant to today’s cooks: New recipes include more vegan options and a brand-new chapter on smoothies, teas, and more. Charts, variations, and other key information have been updated. And, new for this edition, the recipes are showcased in bright full-color photos throughout. With these photos and a host of recipes destined to become new favorites, this already classic vegetarian cookbook will continue to be more indispensable than ever. — From the publisher
Although we got together in person in November, we decided we’d better meet virtually for January. Over Zoom, we can share thoughts and photos, but, sadly, we only get to sample what we made ourselves.
To start things off, we watched a video of Mark Bittman preparing this amazing Layered Vegetable Torte:
Many in the group hadn’t been familiar with Mark Bittman’s cookbooks, of which there are many, and before this month, I had only cooked from his New York Times recipes, myself. How to Cook Everything Vegetarian was given high praise by everyone who used it. The recipes are detailed, yet not overwhelmingly technical (I’m looking at you, ATK.)
The tips and variations and the sheer number of recipes with variations to suit every taste make this a comprehensive, mainstream vegetarian cookbook for people who want to have more vegetables in their diets but don’t necessarily want to start stocking nutritional yeast and flaxseeds.
In my last Weekend Cooking post, I mentioned that we are trying “pantry cooking” this month (i.e. shopping only for fresh fruit, vegetables, eggs, and dairy) to use food stored in our cabinets or freezer. I had a bag of frozen shelled edamame bought for some , so I looked up edamame in the index. The index in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is a textbook example of a perfect cookbook index. (Same, I think, for all of the Mark Bittman cookbooks.) Thirteen options for edamame (See also soybeans) – not counting variations!
I tried the recipes for both the Cheese Scramble and Edamame with Tomatoes and Cilantro, but I used the variation of frozen peas in the Cheese Scramble, since I was serving both dishes together.
For the Cheese Scramble recipe, I used the 8-ounce block of halloumi grilling cheese that I had in the fridge with about three weeks to go before the expiration date. Delicious served over brown rice (one of several serving suggestions) and sprinkled with yet more cilantro!
Sorry for the poor lighting, but the photo was a rush job before a quick taste test with my husband (aka lunch) before dashing out the door to work an evening shift.
One good thing about virtual cookbook club meetings, my husband pointed out, is he gets to eat my cookbook club food. I did leave him a messy kitchen to clean up, but I might have done that before and taken all the food with me!
The alternate selection for the meeting, How to Cook Everything Fast: A Better Way to Cook Great Food by Mark Bittman, was also well liked. The only complaints were the books’ weight (so heavy!) and that the vast quantity of recipes included meant there couldn’t be photos of them all or anywhere near that.
You can find many sample Mark Bittman recipes online, but he is also a food activist. Watch a recent TED talk he did in Boston about making good food affordable to everyone:
Weekend Cooking is hosted by Marg at The Intrepid Reader and Baker. Visit her blog for more Weekend Cooking posts from other bloggers!
Vegetable cooking is both fun and challenging! I’ve been looking at ethnic cookbooks for new vegetarian ideas. We simply decided to buy LESS meat (not to stop buying meat). It has been enjoyable.
best… mae at maefood.blogspot.com
If I’m fixing a meal, I prefer vegetarian cooking but it does take a lot of washing, peeling, and chopping!
Mark Bittman is a great cookbook author, I have a couple of his books and have turned to his recipes often. I enjoy Vegetarian cookbooks for new ideas on more vegetables, and I have noticed we have (like Mae) reduced our consumption of meat, but not eliminated it. Around here the price of it will have you eating less…
I generally really like Mark Bittman. I’ve given his cookbooks as gifts many times. We eat vegetarian pretty much 50% of the time.
Mark Bittman’s books are great. I eat plant based so a book like this is appealing.
We recently had a conversation about increasing the number of vegetarian dishes we eat. We have a couple of favourite meat free recipes we cook regularly but we do need some more.