Almost Vegetarian: A Primer for Cooks Who Are Eating Vegetarian Most of the Time, Chicken & Fish Some of the Time, & Altogether Well All of the Time - Softcover

Shaw (Vegetarian Entertaining) targets a wide audience with this collection of 170-plus recipes featuring ingredients that are mostly vegetarian and low in fat. Picking up on a major motivation for the population's move away from red meat, the author focuses on dishes that offer flavor without a high fat content, emphasizing salads enlivened by a liberal use of herbs, soups and casseroles whose taste and richness are deepened by long, slow cooking. Nutritional counts per serving are included. While many of the vegetable dishes, which can be main courses or side dishes, highlight produce associated with Mediterranean-style cooking, dishes built around such winter vegetables as hard squashes and potatoes are particularly interesting. A chapter on pastas and risottos and one on desserts merit special mention. Shaw's prose is breezy and personal, occasionally becoming verbose, bordering on arch. The page design, with boxes, tips and other asides, is attractive, though busy and sometimes distracting. Lengthy introductory material includes brief descriptions of cooking methods, a directory of fresh vegetables, legumes, seasonings and flavorings; a bibliography and list of mail-order sources are also provided. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"Almost vegetarian" is a good description of the way more and more people are not quite giving up meat but no longer eating it every day, and this book should have broad appeal. Shaw, author of Grilling from the Garden (LJ 8/93) and two other strictly vegetarian cookbooks, does not include red meat in her latest book, but there are fish and poultry entrees and other dishes this time around. Most are low-fat and high-fiber. The recipes are an eclectic collection, though not, perhaps, quite as interesting as those in Grilling, with lots of variations and boxes on tips and techniques. A few quibbles aside (e.g., how many cooks will be able to find baby artichokes with 4-inch stems for soup?), this is recommended for most collections.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.