Vegan Fire & Spice: 200 Sultry and Savory Global Recipes [Paperback]

Robin Robertson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2, 2008

This book is your culinary passport to the world's spicy cuisines. It lets you take a trip around the world with delicious, mouth-watering, meatless, dairy-free, and egg-free recipes, ranging from mildly spiced to nearly incendiary. Explore the spicy cuisines of the U.S., South America, Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India, and Asia with: Red-Hot White Bean Chili, Tunisian Couscous, Vindaloo Vegetables, Vegetable Tagine wth Seitan, Szechuan Noodle Salad, Turkish Bulgur Pilaf, Jambalaya, Thai Coconut Soup, Penne Arrabbiata, Satays with Ginger Peanut Sauce, and many more.
Organized by global regions, this book gives you 200 inventive and delicious 100% vegan recipes for traditional international dishes, using readily available ingredients. Best of all, you can adjust the heat yourself and enjoy these recipes hot - or not. (Note: This is a 100% vegan, revised and updated version of Robin's 1998, out-of-print vegetarian book, Some Like It Hot, and contains new recipes and important new content.)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Want a hot, spicy trip around the world? Save the money on airfare and instead splurge on Robin Robertson s latest work, Vegan Fire and Spice. Already a prolific cookbook author, Robertson tackles some fairly uncharted territory for us vegans, culinarily speaking. Even though there s a lengthy and lustrous history of ethnic vegetarian cuisine, Robertson s book gets more in depth as her recipes are often as authentic, and authentically spicy, as they can be. Separated into regions the Americas, Mediterranean Europe, the Middle East and Africa, India, and Asia the book features appetizers, soups and sides, main courses, and sauces for each locale. From classic dishes like Spicy Rotini Primavera to the truly exotic Vietnamese fish Sauce, the heat index can be adjusted to personal taste. Robertson arms her readers with the right way to cool down after one chile too many, and encourages us to try a little more heat than we may usually attempt. Forget the armchair; stovetop travelling is far spicier. --Elizabeth Castoria, VegNews Magazine, March/April 2008

Whether you like your food mildly seasoned or boldly spiced, Vegan Fire & Spice is the go-to book for great-tasting and healthful global vegan recipes. --Neal Barnard, M.D., president of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

Hands down, the most flavorful vegan cookbook in print. Vegan Fire & Spice brings together authentic, wonderfully spiced dishes from every continent. If you re tired of making vegan recipes that don t bring the thunder, you need this cookbook in your kitchen. --Erik Marcus, publisher of Vegan.com

Whether you like your food mildly seasoned or boldly spiced, Vegan Fire & Spice is the go-to book for great-tasting and healthful global vegan recipes. --Neal Barnard, M.D., president of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

Hands down, the most flavorful vegan cookbook in print. Vegan Fire & Spice brings together authentic, wonderfully spiced dishes from every continent. If you re tired of making vegan recipes that don t bring the thunder, you need this cookbook in your kitchen. --Erik Marcus, publisher of Vegan.com

About the Author

Robin Robertson is the author of the best-selling Vegan Planet, Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker, and The Vegetarian Meat & Potatoes Cookbook. She is a vegan chef and award-winning cookbook author whose culinary experience spans over 25 years. She has been a restaurant chef, caterer, cooking teacher, and food columnist. Her features and columns regularly appear in VegNews Magazine and on the Internet.

Product Details

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: Vegan Heritage Press (January 2, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0980013100
• ISBN-13: 978-0980013108
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,402 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Special Diet > Low Cholesterol
  • #92 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International

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

101 of 103 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious - can't wait to try more!, May 5, 2008

By 

Kenneth Simon (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vegan Fire & Spice: 200 Sultry and Savory Global Recipes (Paperback)

I've hesitated to review cookbooks because I'm never sure when I've tried enough of one to warrant a review. After all, I can only comment on the bits and pieces with which I have experience. Still, the good cookbooks are worth mentioning, and this is one of the good ones.

As I flip through Vegan Fire & Spice, I'm finding that just about every recipe screams "Try me!" The recipes are organized broadly into large swaths of the globe (The Americas, Mediterranean Europe, The Middle East and Africa, India and Asia), and each section is further broken down into more specific regions. The recipes are -- you guessed it -- spicy, though of course this is adjustable to taste by varying the amount of spice or the quantity of chilis.

Anshu's Red Lentil Sambar sounded immensely appealing, although it required a trip to the local Indian grocery to purchase Garam Masala and a Sambar spice mixture. This is a good weekend recipe, as preparation and cooking takes some time. And there's a small criticism: I wish this cookbook included estimated prep times, because although some steps in this recipe gave approximate times, others did not and so it was hard in advance to get a sense of how long I'd be in the kitchen. I started making this at 6:45 and the meal wasn't ready until 9:00. Now that I understand the recipe, I'm sure that I could cut that time way down -- but it was worth even the long prep time.

The sambar is a delicious, hearty dish, full of chunks of vegetables and rich simmered lentils. It is more like a stew than the thin sambar soup you normally get in restaurants. Spiced to perfection -- and even better when I brought some with me for lunch the next day.

On a side note: I purchased this and another vegetarian cookbook from Amazon, and in a lovely gesture, they tucked in a coupon for a McDonald's chicken sandwich with my order. How thoughtful. At least I got a laugh in about it!

53 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite vegan cookbook so far, December 27, 2009

By 

J. Smith "jennie activist" (Miami, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Vegan Fire & Spice: 200 Sultry and Savory Global Recipes (Paperback)

I went vegan two months ago--something I never thought I could do. Giving up meat, I knew I could handle; but giving up cheese, cream and yogurt? Impossible. Still, what I had learned about the dairy industry compelled me to give it my best shot, so I immediately bought 3 vegan cookbooks to help me with the somewhat daunting task of eliminating animal products from my diet. And I must admit that, of the 3 cookbooks I bought, this is the one that has gotten the most use by far, even though it's the smallest of the three.

Perhaps I am biased, because I love spicy food? I'm not sure. What I do know is that the recipes in here are fabulous. I haven't tried all of them--far from it; I've only tried a handful--but those that I have made have been so delicious and easy to make that I keep making them over and over again before trying new ones, just because I know I love them. My very favorite is the Chickpea and Green Bean Curry, which I have made several times now for omnivorous friends who all love it and agree that there is nothing missing. But the Lentils in Onion Gravy (don't be fooled--it's an absolutely delicious Indian dal with amazing flavor; the name is deceptive) are right up there with the curry. The Moroccan Chickpea Soup was bursting with flavor. The Nigerian Peanut Stew is one of the most interesting (and heartiest) meals I've ever made. And there are so many others I can't wait to try...

The only recipe so far that has disappointed me was, ironically, the very first one I tried, a Spicy Eggplant and Potato Stew with chickpeas. I don't know if I made it wrong, or if I just don't like that recipe much, but I was disappointed, and almost thought that I wasn't going to like the cookbook. Luckily I decided to give it another chance, and since that first letdown, every single recipe I've made has been fabulous and has been just as pleasing to the (omnivorous) friends I've fed it to as it has to me.

I like the way the author has divided the cookbook into geographical sections, which is different from the set-up of most cookbooks where they're divided by ingredients. I also like that there is not an emphasis on reproducing meat tastes and textures. Since I've given up real meat, I have no particular desire to eat "fake meat"; there are plenty of dishes that are perfectly delicious all on their own without having to try to substitute fake meat or cheese products. And I am always so proud to cook for my friends (I'm the only vegan among my good friends) and see how much they actually enjoy my vegan food. I try never to be self-righteous when explaining my new lifestyle choice, nor to point a finger at anyone who hasn't adopted it, especially since it has only been a couple of months for me. But I think that if I can manage to convince people who are utterly persuaded that they could never be content without eating animal products that you CAN eat really well as a vegan and not even miss those things, then maybe I am helping to set the stage and get the wheels in their mind turning and maybe one day when they're ready they will join me.

41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious recipes, June 1, 2008

By 

Frances L. (Irvine, CA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Vegan Fire & Spice: 200 Sultry and Savory Global Recipes (Paperback)

I bought this book a few weeks ago for my vegetarian daughter. She has cooked many different recipes from it and they are all great. I think that we'll throw out all our other cookbooks. This is the only one that we now use. My husband and I have stopped eating meat since my daughter's cooking is so good. The meals are rich and hearty, and they don't need meat to make them great. Robin may be a couple of new vegetarian converts soon!