Passionate Vegetarian [Paperback]

Crescent Dragonwagon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2002

Introducing a new voice in vegetarian cooking. Packed with 1,000 recipes that are seductive, sexy, and utterly delicious, Passionate Vegetarian covers all the bases of meatless cooking, from east (Stir Fry of Asparagus with Black Bean-Ginger Sauce), west (Talk of the Town Barbecued Tofu), from the Mediterranean (Swiss Chard with Raisins, Onions & Olives) to the American South (Black-Eyed Pea Ragovt). You'll find lush lasagnas; plump pierogies; bountiful burgers, beans, and breads; pleasing pasta and pies. You'll spoon up soups and stews, and delight in desserts from simple to swoonworthy.

Written by longtime vegetarian Crescent Dragonwagon, author of Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread Cookbook, Passionate Vegetarian employs innovative methods (try "Ri-sort-ofs," in which risotto technique is used to create splendid, richly flavored grain dishes built around not just rice but also barley, buckwheat, spelt, and even toasted oats with an array of seasonings) and introduces lesser-known ingredients (get to know and love not just tofu and tempeh but a whole new generation of soyfoods, as well as "Quick Fixes" like instant bean flakes). Opinionated, passionate, and deeply personal, Ms. Dragonwagon's tantalizing headnotes will have readers rushing to the kitchen to start cooking. (Can her over-the-top Garlic Spaghetti really be that good? It is.)

Whether you're a committed vegetarian, a dedicated vegan (most recipes offer low-fat and vegan options), or a food-loving omnivore in search of something new and wonderful, this is not just vegetarian cooking--but cooking, period--at its most creative, inspiring, and exuberant.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Crescent Dragonwagon shares a wealth of recipes and memories with humor and intelligence in her extraordinary Passionate Vegetarian. She promises that "here you will be well fed, well loved, well tended to, satisfied," and 1,000-plus recipes later, that's exactly what's delivered.

For 18 years Dragonwagon owned and ran a country inn, where she fed glorious food to everyone including vegetarians, diabetics, the lactose intolerant, and people with food allergies. But the real draw here is that this is vegetarian cooking for everyday living. Ingredient lists are always reasonable and understandable; you won't have to search high and low for something esoteric that'll make or break a recipe. This is comfort food that's easy to prepare, and that deprives you of nothing. If you're not a full-time vegetarian, this is the biggest book of potential starters and side dishes you'll ever see.

Dragonwagon's "swoon-worthy, knock-your-socks-off, delicious food" includes hors d'oeuvres; salads; soups; stews; layered dishes; dishes that star grains, beans, or soy; recipes for every vegetable imaginable; burgers and patties; quick dishes; and desserts. From the simple Melissa's Spinach Casserole and Susie Pryor's beautifully impressive "Perfectly Delicious" Stuffed Acorn Squash to the vibrant Stir-Fry of Asparagus with Black Bean-Ginger Sauce and Mr. Panseer's North-Indian-Style Spinach, Dragonwagon offers flavors and cooking techniques from all over the world--everything from old favorites to new twists. With notes on "cooking, eating, loving and living fearlessly," there's a lot to learn here, and it's not just about vegetables. --Leora Y. Bloom

From Library Journal

For many years, Dragonwagon and her husband ran an inn in the Ozarks of Arkansas, and two previous cookbooks, The Dairy Hollow House Cookbook and Dairy Hollow House Soups and Breads: A Country Inn Cookbook, grew out of that experience. Despite having been a vegetarian for decades, Dragonwagon did not feature vegetarian fare at the inn or in her earlier books. This big, exuberant book marks her foray into the cooking closest to her heart, with more than 1000 recipes, from "Welcoming Hors d'Oeuvres" to "Just Desserts." Dragonwagon is indeed a passionate vegetarian, and adjectives like sensual and voluptuous appear in many of her recipe notes. Her food is boldly seasoned and draws from a variety of cuisines. In addition to the recipes, she includes hundreds of boxes and sidebars on ingredients and myriad other subjects; the vegetable chapter, for example, features an A-Z guide to her favorites. There is also a chapter called "Quick Fix," with recipes and suggestions for no-fuss meals. Many of the other recipes offer suggestions for easy variations. Deborah Madison's huge Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone came first, and it and Dragonwagon's book cover similar ground by virtue of having the same topic, but there is little overlap in terms of recipes. With vegetarian cooking more popular than ever, most libraries will want Passionate Vegetarian, too. Highly recommended.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 1120 pages
• Publisher: Workman Publishing Company (October 14, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563057115
• ISBN-13: 978-1563057113
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 8 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (85 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #44,259 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Crescent Dragonwagon, the author of the James Beard Award-winning Passionate Vegetarian, The Cornbread Gospels, Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread Cookbook, many children's books, and two novels, has just completed Bean by Bean.

Dragonwagon is a Southern Yankee: though born in New York, for 18 years she was innkeeper/chef/co-owner of Dairy Hollow House, an acclaimed country inn in the Ozark Mountain community of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where she resided for 36 years. But, since 2002, she has lived in Westminster West, Vermont.

Dragonwagon has the distinction of having prepared beans and cornbread for a president (Bill Clinton), titled royalty (Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia), a world-renowned feminist (Betty Friedan) and Marilyn Monroe's first biographer (Maurice Zolotow). She teaches two writing workshops, Deep Feast: Writing the World through Food, and Fearless Writing, around the world (the latter, she teaches once a year, in the Whole Enchilada version, from her own home hilltop in the Green Mountains). She has appeared on Good Morning America, Today, TVFN, & CNN.

She lives, writes, and cooks in the 1795 farmhouse which once belonged to her aunt, at which she spent summers when a child. She shares the place with her partner, filmmaker David Koff, and, often, numerous well-fed friends. An ardent gardener, she's currently growing 4 different varieties of bush beans, and 5 of pole beans. .. under the supervision of her large and amiable tabby cat, Cattywhompus (who can usually be found rolling in the catmint).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A splendid memorial to the rich culinary life, December 4, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Passionate Vegetarian (Paperback)

Passionate Vegetarian: More Than 1,000 Robust Recipes With Notes On Cooking, Eating, Loving, And Living Fearlessly is one of those ''bible" type of vegetarian cookbooks that contains so much more than recipes that it is almost an invitation to live, or to live more fully. Almost overwhelming in its 1000 plus pages, it is dauntlessly studded with jewel-like recipes within recipes for special sauces, seasonings, condiments and exotic blends.

Author/creator Crescent Dragonwagon is the famed Vegetarian chef and owner of the former celebrated Bed and Breakfast establishment Dairy Hollow Inn in Eureka, Missouri. Though it is now a writer's retreat, many remember fondly the days of its other operation which saw the evolution of many of the succulent recipes contained in Passionate Vegetarian. I never was lucky enough to be a guest there, but I had a friend who did with her husband and never stopped raving about the place and the food.

Chock full of delicious vegetarian classic recipes, Passionate Vegetarian is that wonderful composite, a cookbook designed to educate. Though you might be looking for, say, the definitive recipe for a garbanzo bean stew, when you arrive at the recipe entitled "Spice-Market Melange of Chickpeas and Cauliflower" in the chapter entitled "A Bountiful Bowl of Beans," you absolutely cannot help reading page after page about "Bean Diversity, ""Beans and Grains," "The Three Sisters (beans, corn and squash)," and more. Divided into fifteen exciting chapters, each crammed with scrumptious recipes and suggestions, Passionate Vegetarian covers all things vegetarian from hors d'oeuvres, to soups, stews, savory cobblers, wraps, beans, soyfoods, savory cakes, burgers and patties, to sauces, salsas and seasonings. And of course the grand finale of Just Desserts contains such gems as Triple-Caress Moch Chocolate Chip Cookies, Hazelnut Biscotti, and Ginger Sorbet. However my absolute favorite new recipe that I tried and fought with my husband over the division of was Roasty-Toasty Jerusalem Artichokes, a simple recipe made with Jerusalem artichokes, vegetable oil, and tamari sauce. Clearly, Chef Dragonwagon is unafraid of simple combinations and doing more with less, as well as complex and palate- teasing adventurous dishes, for which she must be justifiably famous. I really cannot rave enough about this cookbook.

It is a classic, a "must-have", and destined to become a favorite of vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike. It is all the more enriched by the author's marvelous sense of humour and her willingness to share her history. I am very sorry to learn of the sudden death of her husband Ned November 30, 2000. Passionate Vegetarian stands as a splendid memorial to the rich culinary life they shared as vegetarians.

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Destined to Become THE Cookbook of the 21st Century, November 15, 2002

By 

Poet in the City (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Passionate Vegetarian (Hardcover)

Vegetarian diets are becoming more popular as nutritional concerns arise and environmental awareness increases, and vegetarian cookbooks are a perfect gift for anyone who has a new domicile or simply loves to eat. In fact, Crescent Dragonwagon has crafted a cookbook so generous and intriguing that I think it would inspire anyone to roll up their sleeves and create a meal. Vegetarian meals are not for vegetarians only anymore!

Dragonwagon takes into account the time and budgetary constraints under which the typical reader may be living and gives wonderful suggestions about how making a little extra of one recipe will be such a time-saver when creating a new dish later in the week. She gives all kinds of anecdotal information about the recipes. I am reading the book cover-to-cover, honestly, because it's so interesting and fun. It conveniently stays flat while you're cooking from it, too-- amazing that all cookbook publishers haven't caught on to this trick yet.

This is the most accessible cookbook I have ever read, and at over 1100 pages and 1000+ recipes, the cover price is an incredible bargain. I predict that The Passionate Vegetarian will become the cooking tome passed from generation to generation and will have a venerated place in kitchens all over the world.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Vegetarian Cookbook Ever, March 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Passionate Vegetarian (Hardcover)

This book is a must for every vegetarian (and vegan, too) out there who spends time in the kitchen wondering what to do about the next meal. I am not a total vegetarian and, to be honest, I tend to be a very lazy cook, but the recipes in "The Passionate Vegetarian" are clear and simple enough for even someone like me to follow...and the taste rewards are enormous. Crescent Dragonwagon has convinced me that I don't have to rely on a rather bland diet to eat meatless meals, and she has dishes here that stack up better than anything I've enjoyed at the homes of great vegetarian cooks and the best vegetarian restaurants. I am kind of a picky eater, but there is so much in this golconda of vegetarian delights that I could probably eat these meals the rest of my life. This book has made a great gift for my vegetarian friends and relatives (hint: if you give this to them, they will cook up some of Crescent's delights for you!). Try the sweet potatoes with Grand Mariner in orange cups and you'll never forget it. The cabbage/apple kugel is to die for, as is the deviled corn and tomato pudding. If I were rich enough to hire a full-time cook, this is the one cookbook I'd give to that person. For vegetarians, a must -- for everyone who loves food, it's also wonderful. And the author's wry and profound reflections on life are an added bonus. Great writing, great cooking and great eating!