Some Like It Hot: 200 Spicy Vegetarian Recipes from Around the World [Paperback]

Robin Robertson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1998

This collection of spicy vegetarian recipes features great dishes from the world's cuisines, including the U.S., South America, Mexico, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, making it an exciting and flavorful journey for the palate. Each recipe is completely accessible and easily adapted to anyone's kitchen, containing only ingredients that are widely available. And dozens of these recipes can be made in a snap.

Organized by region, each chapter includes recipes for appetizers, soups and stews, salads, side dishes, main courses, and dressings and condiments. Robertson provides a basic introduction to the spices and techniques common to each cuisine, along with delicious classic vegetarian dishes, adaptations of meat-based dishes, and her own creative recipes, including:
-- Spicy Okra Gumbo
-- Mexican Rice and Bean Salad with Cumin Vinaigrette
-- Pasta alla Putanesca
-- Braised Cabbage with Cardamom
-- Spicy Ginger Dumplings

Using chilies as the main source of heat, these recipes range from mildly spicy to nearly incendiary, so there's something here for everyone! With creative yet simple recipes and nutritional analyses for each, "Some Like It Hot" is sure to inspire even the most devoted meat lover to eat vegetarian.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Contemporary vegetarians know how to avoid the monotony of a bland diet by using nature's own flavor stimulant, the fire of the hot pepper. Even meat eaters know the importance of the chile in giving any comestible an unmistakable zip. Robertson surveys a number of world cuisines for dishes that not only follow vegetarian rules but also have the welcome bite of hot peppers or of some other tongue stinger, such as horseradish. All recipes come with a simple one-to-three-flame rating system to measure their relative spiciness. For those who wish to avoid even dairy products, Robertson uses only soy milk and even calls for soy-cheese substitutes for Italian dishes. Caribbean and Asian dishes obviously dominate in this world tour since those are the cuisines most comfortable with plenty of spicing. But American bean-based chilis and Slovakian horseradish condiments remind us that even those seemingly tame national cooking styles are not totally bereft of these attention-grabbing spices. Mark Knoblauch

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Plume (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452278694
• ISBN-13: 978-0452278691
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,336,819 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A longtime vegan, Robin Robertson has written nearly twenty cookbooks, including 1,000 Vegan Recipes, Vegan Planet, Vegan Fire and Spice, Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker, and Quick-Fix Vegetarian. For more information about her books and for sample recipes, visit her website at www.globalvegankitchen.com and her blog at http://veganplanet.blogspot.com.

Before she began writing cookbooks, Robin was a restaurant chef and cooking teacher. When she left the restaurant business in the late 1980s, Robin became vegan for ethical reasons. Over the years, she has fine-tuned her plant-based diet into an eclectic and healthful cooking style which she thinks of as a creative adventure with an emphasis on the vibrant flavors of global cuisines and fresh ingredients. In addition to writing cookbooks, Robin writes 'The Global Vegan' column for VegNews Magazine.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent, March 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Some Like It Hot: 200 Spicy Vegetarian Recipes from Around the World (Paperback)

Robin Robertson has converted me into a spicy-foods lover! Her recipes are clear, easy-to-follow, and imaginative. Best of all is the variety! Plenty of emphasis on soy products, too. This book would be ideal for anyone who is vegan--or anyone who wants to have adventures in cooking and eating. She inspired me so much, I cleaned out all my kitchen cabinets and reorganized them!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent international spiciness!, August 22, 2002

By 

Jennifer Sugg "jennknowsbooks" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Some Like It Hot: 200 Spicy Vegetarian Recipes from Around the World (Paperback)

Some Like it Hot offers a creative and very diverse array of international vegetarian fare. From what I can tell it's actually a vegan cookbook as the recipes do not use dairy or eggs in addition to going meatless. Even though the emphasis is on spiciness, not all the recipes need be really hot; in many recipes the heat comes from not-so-hot items like garlic and ginger.

The author shows a great deal of knowledge about foods from many cultures worldwide and thus has brought together her knowledge to present a well-organized and fun variety of recipes. Some of the preparations can be a bit time consuming, but it's a well-spent effort as the end results are so delicious and unique. The recipes covered include places such as: China, Thailand, India, various African countries, Spain, Italy, Mexico, and the Caribbean as well as others. Some Like it Hot also includes an informative and useful introduction explaining the different types of ingredients and spices. It's too bad this book is out of print currently, because it is fantastic.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spicy is Gooood!, August 10, 2002

By 

merrymousies (Waterford, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Some Like It Hot: 200 Spicy Vegetarian Recipes from Around the World (Paperback)

This is a great cookbook - and you can make the recipes as hot or as tame as you like. I actually had expected them to be hotter. I really like how this book is organized according to what part ofthe world they're from. It touches every continent which makes it interesting. Ingedients are pretty mainstream but paired in ways to make them very tasty. And....for the vegans out there.....this is almost a vegan cookbook. Instead of dairy cheese, soy cheeses are used which is neat. In some cases yogurt is an ingredient (but you can find soy yogurt now which is tasty) and silken tofu is provided as an alternative to yogurt too. Some of the recipes I've tried (just to give an idea of what's in here) are: spicy indian green beans, tunisian couscous, rice with lentils and onions, sweet and sour onions and zucchini, red beans and rice, etc. Calories, protien, fat, fiber etc are all provided for each recipe too. I've enjoyed this cookbook so far and look forward to cooking more from it