New Vegetarian [Paperback]

Robin Asbell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 28, 2009

With a look as fresh as the recipes themselves, New Vegetarian is full of modern, flavorful food for the 30 million Americans (more every day!) who are vegetarians. More than 75 delicious and simple dishes span a wide range ofcuisines and cultures—from Vietnamese Pho with Tofu to Baked Creamy Squash Pasta with Arugula. Best of all, the dessert chapter includes goodies so luscious even the most die-hard dairy fans wont suspect these sweet treats arevegan!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

 Robin Asbell  is the author of three books about cooking with whole, natural foods. Her first book, The New Whole Grains Cookbook, is filled with flavorful, beautiful food that just happens to be whole grain. Her second book, The New Vegetarian Cookbook, explores delicious meatless cuisine that even meat lovers will enjoy. The follow up is Big Vegan: Over 350 meat-free and dairy-free recipes from the author of New Vegetarian and New Whole Grains (Chronicle Books Fall 2011).She also writes for many national magazines, such as Clean Eating, Better Homes and Gardens, Taunton's Fine Cooking, Vegetarian Times, and Real Food.

Asbell has many years of experience creating fabulous food in restaurants, and in the homes of private clients. Specializing in natural, healthy food, she works with special diets of all kinds, from gluten free to omnivorous, vegan to over-the top decadent. All those experiences feed into the books she writes and make her food exceptional. She keeps busy traveling the continent, teaching to spread the word about delicious real food.

Yvonne Duivenvoorden is a Toronto-based food, garden, and lifestyle photographer.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (October 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811865797
• ISBN-13: 978-0811865791
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #579,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robin Asbell has been immersed in whole, real foods cooking for most of her life, and has made a vocation of crafting delicious, healthy recipes and writing about it.
Her latest book, Sweet and Easy Vegan, Treats Made with Whole Grains and Natural Sweeteners (Chronicle Books) is the culmination of many years of baking for vegans.
Her last book, Big Vegan, Over 350 Recipes, No Meat, No Dairy, All Delicious, is a celebration of just how satisfying and alluring plant based cuisine can be.Robin's second book, The New Vegetarian Cookbook, brims with her creative and fresh takes on meatless cuisine.
Her first book, The New Whole Grains Cookbook, is filled with flavorful, beautiful food that just happens to be whole grain.
Robin has been cooking and creating recipes in the Natural foods business since the mid 80's. What began as a side job in college turned out to be a lifelong career, when she realized that her true passion lay in healing the Earth and the people around her with healthy, organic food. After baking and cooking with whole foods in restaurants, delis and Coops for many years, she started working as a Private Chef in the mid-90's, creating fabulous food for the fabulous.
She also writes for magazines like Better Homes and Gardens, Real Food, Vegetarian Times, Experience Life, Taunton's Fine Cooking, Mother Earth News, The Mix, and others. She blogs at robinasbell.com/robinwrites, and also posts a weekly soundbite at http://www.amillioncooks.com/bio---robin.html. Robin also teaches popular cooking classes in Minnesota and around the country. www.robinasbell.com,her website, is the place to go to find out if she is coming to a place near you!

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Inspired, show-stopping recipes with a decidedly Asian influence. October 19, 2009

By K. Kasabian VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

New Vegetarian is the real deal, a book of 75 global recipes, some of them vegan, that are delicious and inviting. If your motto is "Try something new every day," this book will keep you sated and happy. Practically speaking, I would classify this as a special-occasion vegetarian cookbook for a couple of reasons:

a) many ingredients (mock abalone, goji berries, kamut, coconut cream) require an extra stop to an ethnic or health food store...or, at the very least, some advance planning if ordering via the internet.

b) many, but not all, recipes are more time or labor intensive than most people can manage Monday through Friday

Still, this book has its place on my bookshelf because the recipes are delicious and the food presents well. It's what I'd reach for when I'm tired of the same 30 or so ingredients I tend to use over and over. It's also perfect for impressing guests. The book is divided into the following sections:

1. Appetizers/small plates - full of beautifully presented dishes that will impress any guest.

2. Salads - one of my favorite sections of the book, because the combinations of fruit, vegetables, nuts and cheeses are unique and mouth-watering

3. Soups - another favorite section, because she understands the importance of good soup making...which always starts with a good homemade broth.

4. Main Courses - I was less impressed with the main courses here, if only because there is a slight emphasis on "mock" meat dishes, a pet peeve of mine, since vegetarian eating shouldn't be construed as a way of pretending to eat meat. Many would argue otherwise and I see their point. I just enjoy honoring wholesome ingredients as they are.

5. Desserts - all vegan, a great idea, since there is an overabundance of great desserts that call for butter and eggs. good section with an offering of both traditional American goodies and some international sweets that may be less familiar to readers.

Some observations on the book overall...the food photography does its job, bringing the author's recipes to life with mouth-watering images. The food styling is excellent.

Valuable information in the introduction about how vegetarians get their nutrients. Also helpful is a resource guide for some of the harder-to-find ingredients.

As briefly mentioned above, this book contains both vegan and vegetarian recipes. Many of the vegetarian recipes could be amended to accommodate vegan diets with simple omissions.

One gripe I have with this book (and some other Chronicle Books publications I own) is this: while I appreciate the clean negative space on the recipe pages, my eyes do NOT enjoy reading such a small typeface, especially when many critical measurements have fractions in them, at what I estimate to be about 4 pt. type. Much, much too small.

Recommended.

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars What Were They Thinking?! October 24, 2009

By Reader VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I love to get new vegetarian cookbooks, I usually experiment with them for weeks until I've tried many of the recipes. As background, I've been a vegetarian for the past 30 years and own more than 150 vegetarian cookbooks.

I received New Vegetarian as part of the Amazon Vine program and I must say, I'm glad that I didn't spend any money on it.

If I had seen this book in a bookstore, I would have put it back on the shelf after glancing at it briefly. For me, cookbooks are tools that I use again and again. There are certain design aspects that are important. First and foremost, legibility. This book reminds me very much of a visit to the optometrist when they ask you to read the line with the smallest print that you're capable of seeing. I think that most of the print is in a size 9 font with the italicized items and the index in a size 8 font(it might be even smaller - a size 4 or 6). The book is very difficult to read and you certainly wouldn't be able to glance at it casually while preparing a recipe. For this reason alone, I would never buy this book or give it as a gift.

Another reason that I am not interested in using this book is that almost every recipe has a very LONG list of ingredients. Each recipe will inevitably require the reader to purchase one or more exotic items, that will probably then sit unused in the pantry. I live within a mile of a Whole Foods Market so I have access to a variety of interesting vegetarian ingredients. However, I live in a city with a very limited selection of ethnic foods, so that it would be difficult to obtain many of the ingredients in this book. The author does not offer suggestions for substitutions for these ingredients. I have a well-stocked kitchen and pantry and I still feel intimidated by the items needed for these recipes.

The recipes may be delicious, but they look like too much trouble to be bothered with.

Here are a few unfussy cookbooks that I would recommend instead:
The Roasted Vegetable
366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans, and Grains
Vegetarian Classics: 300 Essential and Easy Recipes for Every Meal
Quick Vegetarian Pleasures: More than 175 Fast, Delicious, and Healthy Meatless RecipesSimple Vegetarian Pleasures
Main-Course Vegetarian Pleasures
Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites: Flavorful Recipes for Healthful MealsMoosewood Restaurant New Classics
Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home: Fast and Easy Recipes for Any Day
Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers: Fresh Ideas for the Weeknight Table
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars User Unfriendly Cookbook October 30, 2009

By M. Hill TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

This is the most user unfriendly cookbook I've seen in a long time. What's wrong? For starters, the tiny, tiny font size, the refusal of the book to lay open, the large list of ingredients required for almost every recipe, the frequency of unusual ingredients and the lack of photos (23 for the 77 recipes.) I needed a magnifying glass to read the fractions - and as has been noted, forget trying to read the index, not that it matters, because the page numbers are also too small to decipher.

The benefit of cooking vegetarian dishes is that, in general, they are delicious, healthy and economical. I own many vegetarian cookbooks including those named and recommended by other reviewers, and frequently cook from them, but out of the 77 recipes I could only prepare a small number of the dishes without making numerous purchases of items I would use infrequently at best, and in some cases, never again. And if another reviewer could prepare three separate recipes and be disappointed with the results of all of them, why bother to potentially waste the time and money when it appears the recipes were not properly tested.

This book simply isn't for me. I don't want to eat duck, so why would I want to eat Mock Duck? I don't want prune oatmeal baby food in my brownies and I don't want to add 3/4 of a cup of pure maple syrup to a small batch of chocolate chip cookies increasing the cost ten-fold.

The book needed a good editor, tested recipes, photographs for each recipe and a more practical approach because cookbooks, although creative endeavors, are also tools used to accomplish a task, and they need to be constructed with that in mind.