Customer Reviews

The Ethnic Vegetarian: Traditional and Modern Recipes from Africa, America, and the Caribbean

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Ethnic Vegetarian is a book of mostly very easy-to-prepare recipes, cleverly arranged by related cuisines: 1) African, 2) Afro-Carribean, 3) African/Native American (a very specific cuisine from the American South slavery and early post-slavery era), 4) Creole/Cajun, 5) Southern (closely related to African/Native American cuisine), and 6) Modern African American foods. Within each section of cuisines are short lists of condiments, appetizers, salads, soups, mains, breads, desserts, and beverages.

Because of the ambitious nature of the book--six cuisines and at least six courses per cuisine, in only 272 pages including all the intro stuff and the index--none of these cuisines is covered in very much depth. This means there is offered only a small handful of each kind of food. There is a very short menus section toward the end, but this too is enough to tempt but not satisfy.

I think this book is best for two types of cooks:
1) beginning cooks interested in trying their hand at making tasty, basic dishes of African and African-American origin. The book is great for new cooks who love many different flavor combinations--sweet, spicy, earthy, rich--and who want to start easy and work their way up; and
2) very confident cooks who already know what generally they prefer to cook and eat, know how to experiment widely, and want some suggestions for great African-origin dishes, flavors, and combinations, and are comfortable adapting recipes to their liking.

There is a section in the back on what to stock in your pantry--very useful if you are just starting out in your cooking adventures and aren't really sure what foods you might want to have on hand. Similarly, there's a basics section that tells you good stuff about preparing dried beans, toasting nuts, prepping chiles, etc.

I found the book fairly useful as a compilation of suggestions--but suggestions I would almost certainly, and sometimes radically, revise to suit my tastes. My tastes are foods made fresh from scratch, whole foods, and artfully-prepared vegetarian foods that don't try to pass themselves off as meat--tastes not terribly accommodated by this book. The book is also fairly heavy on the dairy and eggs, which means vegans have to do the usual recipe adaptations.

This book is, in my opinion, a little too reliant on prepared foods that are meant to mimic animals. This isn't necessarily a fundamental flaw in the book: There is a place for this kind of cooking, particularly if you are in a household where someone is a hard-core meat eater and has a prejudice against anything vegetarian; in this case, maybe you want foods that seem enough like meat to entice the carnivore to even try your dishes. It is also true that a couple of the cuisines in this book are meat-heavy (particularly Southern US cuisines) and therefore take some creative re-engineering to adapt them to vegetarian palates.

It's just that I don't think vegetarian food has anything to apologize for (quite the contrary, great vegetarian food is worthy of trumpeting!).

One thing that keeps me from giving this book a higher rating: In the discussion of types of vegetarians, the author includes people who eat chicken and fish. Let us be very clear: No vegetarians eat animals. There is a wide spectrum of vegetarians, with vegans (no animal products of any kind whatsoever) being the purest and lacto-ovo vegetarians (dairy and eggs included) being the most permissive. But no vegetarian of any kind will eat a fish or a chicken, as these are animals, and vegetarians by even the most lax definition do not eat animals. Although there are no recipes in the book that include chicken or fish, I am dismayed that a "vegetarian" cookbook would include eating animals in a "vegetarian" diet. If you've ever been stuck on an 11-hour airplane trip with no food to eat because the term "vegetarian" is misunderstood, you'll understand my dismay.
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The Ethnic Vegetarian is a decent book, not a great book. I do pull it out of my shelf on occasion. I'd pull it out a lot more often if it were more comprehensive, less oriented toward prepared meat-like foods, and perhaps a little more advanced. My complaints about this book may be the very reasons someone else praises it.

In any case, I'm just glad there's such a book out there at all, whether I perceive flaws in it or not.

While a few recipes do use eggs or cheese, most do not. Lots of tasty vegan options here.

Finally - a vegetarian cookbook that is not full of the same darn stuff. Most of the veggie cookbooks I find seem to be the same, different variations of the same old stuff, definitely lacking in variety....they're full of tasty food, but they're all the same nonetheless.

If you want some different foods on your plate - THIS book is AMAZING....awesome food, great variety of tastes and ingredients, some recipes are more complicated, some not so much. Its one of the best veggie cookbooks I've run across in a long time (and I'm always looking).

One drawback though - the author IS way off on the volumes/relative proportions of ingredients in some of the recipes. So, use your best judgement, and alter it to work for your family/taste. I usually use recipes as a base anyway, and don't follow them to the T, so that issue doesn't bother me too much.

Overall, a great cookbook.

This is my third time that I've tried to be a vegetarian, and I've lasted six months while the last two times I only lasted about two weeks. The reason was because, being from a black family rich with soul food/grease/meat, it's incredibly hard for me to change my eating habits. The good thing about it is that I'm not that fond of red meat, but I'm starting to gain weight by eating so much seafood and bread to replace it. When i saw this book, it was such a relief. Finally, a cookbook that can explain to me what I need to eat, what I need to buy, and give me appetizing recipes that I would actually WANT to cook instead of feeling like I NEED to cook. This book is organized, conversational, easy to follow, and educational. I really want to thank you, Angela Shelf Medearis, from the bottom of my heart for making this one!

I have tried almost half of the recipes and loved every single one. I was worried about the large amount of food - but I have never had leftovers for very long. Excellent and creative uses for veggie meat.

We are not vegetarians, but I have been toying with reducing meats in my family's diet. When I picked up this book, I was skeptical. However, each recipie that I have tried has been fantastic! My husband loves the spiciness of the dishes, and I love the rich flavors. The meals are substantial, and you won't miss the meat. Enjoy!

I used to only cook Thai and Indian vegetarian foods, then saw this book and was impressed by the variety of new recipes, including things I knew from Southern and African restaurants. When tagging the recipes I wanted to try first, I found myself marking half the pages! It's great for planning a week of menus using similar ingredients to make a ton of different things. I half all the recipe quantities, and they are good for 2-3 people that way. It's all been delicious and easy, with most main dishes only using one pot. The instructions for Injera (Ethiopian bread) were creative and it turned out great! I'm starting to use the more authentic ingredients suggested in the recipe descriptions instead of the Americanized versions, using produce and flours from Mexican and Indian grocers (we don't have an African grocer here), and it is even better that way. It's all very protein-rich, so I've never been tempted to add meat to anything in this book.

I looked for an ethnic vegetarian cookbook when I realized that I was scouring my standard cookbooks for Indian or Ethiopian inspired vegetarian recipes. We've tried 5 recipes so far and found them all excellent. The recipes are organized first by region (African, Caribbean, Native American, Creole, Southern, and Modern African-American), then by type (appetizers, soups, etc). What this book does well is to offer recipes from a lot of cultures that seem to be overlooked in other vegetarian cookbooks. The recipes are unusual but tasty. Some are spicy hot, some aren't. Most of the ingredients are readily available (or have substitutions) and many recipes are quick.

There are two reasons that I did not give 5 stars. The first is that this book occasionally commits a vegetarian sin in my opinion by taking a recipe intended for chicken or some other meat and simply substituting tofu. If you like tofu, it won't bother you. To me, it's unimaginative and cheating in a way. I dislike tofu but really like lentils and beans. I'd rather have more recipes that are designed to be vegetarian from the start.

The other reason I knocked off a star is because there are no pictures of food items. I really like to see what a dish is supposed to look like. Again, if it doesn't bother you, it's fine.

I'm giving this book as a gift next month, but have made a few recipes for the birthday girl, who was a food critic for our newspaper for 20 years. This book has her thinking I'm brilliant! Don't know if I should admit that they're really easy recipes and just perfect combinations of flavors. . .

I've tried about 5 recipes from this book and all of them were dismal failures. The author is way off with the amounts needed for each ingredient. I tried the jerk tofu and plantain and black bean fritters. What a mess! This is the worst vegetarian cookbook I have and I will not be trying anything else in the book.