The vegetarian flavor Bible : the essential guide to culinary creativity with vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and more, based on the wisdom of leading American chefs

1545 Pages·2014·20.14 MB·English

by  Page

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“And God said, See, I have given you every herb that
yields seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and
every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for
food.”
—Genesis 1:29, New King James Bible
“It is my view that a vegetarian manner of living… would
most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.”
—Albert Einstein, in a letter to Hermann Huth (December 27, 1930)
“The weight of evidence at this point in time… is so overwhelming.
… Nothing else… can begin to compete with the evidence
available for the whole food, plant-based diets in terms of
promoting human health.”
—T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study

For Andrew,
who—even after twenty-nine years—still
continues to surprise me

INTRODUCTION
“Over half of Americans [52 percent] believe it is easier to figure out
their income taxes than to figure out what they should and shouldn’t
eat to be healthier.”
—
THE 2012 FOOD & HEALTH SURVEY: CONSUMER ATTITUDES TOWARD FOOD SAFETY, NUTRITION & HEALTH, COMMISSIONED BY THE
INTERNATIONAL FOOD INFORMATION COUNCIL FOUNDATION
“In all my interviews with nutrition experts, the benefits of a plant-
based diet provided the only point of universal consensus.”
—
MICHAEL POLLAN, IN DEFENSE OF FOOD (2008)
This book started with a problem: I didn’t know what to eat.
In two decades of writing about food, I’ve have had the pleasure and
privilege of interviewing many of the world’s greatest chefs while studying their
secrets for making food taste great. My work-related eating (including wine-
tasting lunches and dinners) often took me to the dining rooms of DANIEL, Le
Bernardin, and Per Se—or, during a year spent eating at chefs’ favorite
restaurants from coast to coast, sampling In-N-Out burgers, pork-and-crab soup
dumplings, and both Pat’s and Geno’s cheese steaks. My life included an endless
pursuit of deliciousness, and I was always thrilled to discover what I’d learn
from the next bite. But as more and more headlines trumpeted the relationship
between nutrition and wellness, it dawned on me that for someone who ate for a
living, I’d thought surprisingly little about what to put in my body to keep
myself healthy when I wasn’t busy eating for professional reasons.
After I lost both my father and stepmother to cancer between 2006 and 2009,
I couldn’t help thinking about my own half-century birthday looming on the
horizon. It finally occurred to me, for the first time in my life, that I might want
to start including healthfulness as a criterion for choosing what to eat.
After poring over dozens of books and websites on food and nutrition, I
found myself confused by varying (and often contradictory) nutritional advice. If
I—a graduate of Northwestern and Harvard and longtime culinary professional
—was having a tough time figuring out what makes a healthful diet, what about
everyone else? I was not surprised, then, to discover that in a 2012 poll, over half
of Americans polled said they found it easier to do their taxes than to figure out
what to eat to keep themselves healthy. Now that’s frustration.
The general public’s lack of nutritional knowledge is tragic, because it turns
out that the leading cause of death in this country is nutritionally
controllable diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Diets that
forego animal protein in favor of plant protein are associated with a lower risk of
all three.
I eventually did find this common thread among what I learned to be the best-
respected authorities: their advice to eat a plant-based diet, especially plentiful
vegetables. The corollary was to avoid processed “junk” foods with empty
calories (especially from fat and sugar) and to instead opt for whole foods as
much as possible.
When I finally decided to experiment with virtually full-time vegetarianism
in May 2012, I kept quiet about it—because having grown up in the heart of the
Midwest, eating meat at least two and often three times a day, I had serious
doubts that I could stick with a meatless diet for even a week or two.
My husband, Andrew—who had cooked professionally at some of the best
restaurants in Boston and New York City, and who bravely joined me in my
experiment in meatless eating—typically did our grocery shopping and most of
the cooking. I provided “help” by giving him a list of what not to buy: Junk
foods. Soft drinks. White flour, white sugar, white rice. Anything with
hydrogenated vegetable oil. Trans fats. GMOs. Every news report seemed to add
a new no-no to the list.
Over time, my “what-not-to-buy” list got so long that he grumbled, “Maybe
you could make a list of what you’d like me to buy.”
A light bulb went off. I realized that avoiding certain foods—whether meats
or white foods—was only one part of the picture. I decided to start a list of the
healthiest ingredients that would provide us with the biggest nutritional bang for
the calorie—“superfoods” that we could easily enjoy at home: Black beans.
Blueberries. Broccoli. Kale. Lemons. Quinoa. Spinach. Then I started
researching compatible flavors and flavor affinities for each, for ease in creating
dishes. Then dish ideas themselves were added, often inspired by my research on