The New Vegetarian Epicure: Menus--with 325 all-new recipes--for family and friends [Hardcover]

Anna Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 21, 1996

Anna Thomas, author of the best-selling The Vegetarian Epicure, which became the bible of vegetarian cooks in the seventies and remains a classic, now returns with an exuberant new cookbook that reflects the way we live and eat today. The 66 menus are geared to busy, health-conscious families who are drawn to good fresh foods and lighter fare, filled with the pungent ethnic flavors that Anna Thomas loves.

Here are more than 325 recipes for every occasion, from seasonal family meals and little dinner parties to picnics and holiday feasts. For example:

A Simple Autumn Dinner Party that includes a freshly made Focaccia, Lima Bean Soup, Torta di Polenta with a Roasted Tomato Sauce, and Parfaits of Fruit and Mascarpone

A family meal of a Salad of Bitter Greens with Gorgonzola Cheese and Walnuts, Oyster Mushroom Chowder, Fast Buttermilk Rolls, and an Apple and Pear Crumble

A celebratory Cinco de Mayo Dinner of Nopalito Salad, Tamales with Zucchini and Cilantro Filling, Chile Ancho Salsa, Garlic and Cumin Rice, and Flan with Caramel and Pineapple

There are easy Salad Lunches, Soup Suppers, Pasta Dinners, Dinner in a Bowl, and A Casserole Supper--all foods that children love. And there are salad lunches for hot days, mezze (hearty little Middle Eastern dishes) for a crowd, a variety of teas, brunches, and a wine-tasting.

Freshness is all-important to Anna Thomas, and she offers great tips about growing tomatoes, gathering wild mushrooms, and understanding chiles, as well as suggesting strategies for getting children to eat well.

The captivating voice of Anna Thomas, which inspired a whole generation, is now even more irresistible as she persuades her contemporaries, pressured by all the demands of the day, to carve out a little time to prepare delicious, healthy meals and to experience the joy of sharing with family and friends the pleasure of the table.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Anna Thomas, author of the '70s classic The Vegetarian Epicure, is back with a cookbook for the '90s. The New Vegetarian Epicure is another of the noteworthy titles in this summer's spate of cookbooks centered on vegetables and vegetarian cuisine (Fresh From the Garden: Cooking and Gardening Throughout the Year by Perla Meyers and Chez Panisse Vegetables by Alice Waters are two others). There are more than 300 recipes--everything from a Relaxed Summer Dinner Party of Tapenade, Cold Melon Soup, and Risotto with Zucchini Flowers to A Rustic Autumn Dinner of Roasted Vegetables, Rice Pilaf, and Plum and Walnut Galette. Thomas' approach is healthy and light, with a distinctive Mediterranean touch based on the use of olive oil, if oil is called for at all.

From Publishers Weekly

A voice from the bellbottom years returns, sounding as fresh and fun now as she did then. In The Vegetarian Epicure, published in 1972 and followed a few years later by Volume II, Thomas was a wacky, workable combination of Adele Davis and Julia Child. Offering one of the first more sophisticated approaches to vegetarian cooking, Thomas's cookbooks gave rise to elegant vegetarian dinner parties as well as solid, meat-free family fare. That tradition is carried forward here, 20 years later, with menu-based recipes arranged by season, beginning with An Early Spring Dinner featuring Risotto de Zucca through a New Year's Eve dinner ("a meal for an occasion") co-starring Wild Mushroom Soup and Cream Cheese Pierogi with Timbales of Tahitian Squash and Pears. There are menus for picnics, for brunches, suppers or for celebrations that few fine home cooks will scorn to follow. That this is the '90s is evident in numerous elements: lowered fat (Revised Caesar Salad replaces the egg with a tablespoon or two of reduced-fat mayonnaise and calls for "a lighter hand with the olive oil"); a marked Southwest slant (lots of salsas and dried chiles, and recipes for nopalitos, the new shoots of the nopal cactus); the use of once exotic ingredients like Kabocha and Tahitian squash; roasting as a favored cooking method for vegetables; and plentiful recipes for the likes of polenta, sorbet and biscotti. Soups figure prominently, among them Raspberry Borscht and a Wild Mushroom and Charred Tomato Soup. There are crepes (Buckwheat Crepes with Onions, Apples and Cheese), numerous salads (Roasted Beet, Asparagus and Garlic Salad, with red and golden beets), breads and some pasta dishes. Dessert is invariably important, e.g., Warm Chocolate Cakes with Creme Anglaise and Boysenberry Sauce. Thomas's menu approach serves vegetarian cooking, where texture and flavoring are crucial to variety, eminently well; an index guides cooks searching for recipes by ingredient. From a simple roasted squash, garnished only with olive oil and salt and pepper, to the elaborate multi-stepped construction of a centerpiece Tamale Pie, Thomas proves once more that meatless meals can be fashionable, fun and satisfying.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 449 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (May 21, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679427147
• ISBN-13: 978-0679427148
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.2 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #217,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is great cooking, from an old friend, April 12, 2002

By 

Michele Kellett (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The New Vegetarian Epicure: Menus--with 325 all-new recipes--for family and friends (Hardcover)

When I was in college almost 30 years ago, "vegetarian cooking" was an oxymoron. Cooking and eating vegetarian was attractive from an ecological point of view (see Diet for a Small Planet), and sometimes as part of a hippie rebellion stance, but, as the daughter of a Frenchwoman, I felt that one could only go so far. Like, I drew the line at those ghastly soyburgers. And what on earth could you serve guests out of those earnest, dietarily correct tomes? And if one needed to conduct a seduction? Honey, it was lamb chops or nothing.

Well, Anna Thomas was the answer. Rich, sophisticated (to us, anyway), delicious, impressive, yet charming and lighthearted recipes from cover to cover.

My copy of The Vegetarian Epicure grew tattered, and I became a better cook, and acquired a family, and the good sense to realize that you just can't cook with that amount of butter, cheese, cream and eggs and hope to maintain a figure of any sort. So I lost touch with Anna. And, though I never committed to whole-hog vegetarianism, I bought many excellent vegetarian cookbooks over the years, and put together a fair repertoire in the genre.

And then a few years ago, I ran into Anna Thomas in the bookstore, in the form of her New Vegetarian Epicure. It was like running into a friend from college you had always liked and admired, and been a little afraid to find out what had happened to. The good news was that she is as charming and resourceful as ever, and has grown up along with us, only, perhaps, with more grace.

The recipes are arranged in menus, which puts some people off, but I have cooked many of the entire menus, as well as individual recipes, and THEY NEVER FAIL! They are much lighter than the recipes in her first two books, but just as imaginative, delicious, and deeply impressive to a crowd. (Most of these recipes feed 8-12 people, which makes me imagine that Anna has many friends and loves them very much). She has a chapter on what kids like. She knows what it's like to feed a family, and to feed a mixed crowd of herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. She is un-doctrinaire. When you cook and consume this food, it is good food, pure and simple. I fed a large, motley, shifting population of friends and in-laws from this book for three solid weeks, because one person staying with us is vegetarian, and no one was even aware they weren't eating red meat, chicken or fish.

Not for the stodgy and not for beginners, but hey, we're not kids anymore. We don't need to be talked down to. Favorites: Corn Crepes with Goat Cheese Stuffing, with an excellent Mole Poblano. And a really brilliant Grapefruit Sorbet with Pernod.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Somebody's gotten a little too fancy., January 14, 2004

By 

Bat-Radish - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Vegetarian Epicure: Menus--with 325 all-new recipes--for family and friends (Hardcover)

It's....good food. It's tasty. I can't really fault the flavor of the recipes in this book.

I've got a major quibble, however. Where the original Vegetarian Epicure had a cozy down-homeness, this new version is like reading a cooking magazine. The amount of cream and eggs overall has been reduced, the cooking times have been cut down, and we see no more of the odd potato peel broth she loved so much twenty years ago. These are good things. But somewhere along the line it's as though most of the soul has been taken out.

I stress again that the thing reads like a cooking magazine. There's hardly another way to describe it. The emphasis on absolutely fresh produce, on unusual ingredients, and on clever presentation--these are the hallmarks of food that is just a little too fancy for the home cook to bother with on a busy Tuesday night. And there's no hope for you if you don't have access to a farmer's market.

Newer isn't always better. There's a reason people have been using their copies of the first Vegetarian Epicure for twenty years. It's accessible. It's adaptable. This one? Not so much. Try feeding eight of your friends Raspberry Borscht, and I'll bet that six of them will wish you'd made Mushrooms Berkeley again.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars every recipe works, January 12, 2008

By 

concerned citizen (U.S.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Vegetarian Epicure: Menus--with 325 all-new recipes--for family and friends (Hardcover)

This is the cookbook I go to for recipes that always work. I am not a vegetarian, although I was for years and I worshiped her other two books when they came out. Now, even though I do eat meat and have a lot of fancier cookbooks by professional chefs, I find that I go back to this book again and again because everything is delicious and easy and healthy. Also, you can tell that she has really developed and perfected these recipes because they always turn out well and there are no surprises.

There are a couple of fancier recipes in the book but for the most part the recipes are pretty simple everyday stuff (depending on your taste-- her taste is very fresh food/California/flavorful). If you are looking for a cookbook to actually cook out of, this is the one-- I think I have made over half of the dishes in the book and they were all great.