My Favorite Cookbook: World Vegetarian by Madhur Jeffrey
In my kitchen, messiness is a measure of a cookbook’s merit
World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey (1999).
“This book, then, is my handpicked collection of the world’s best vegetarian recipes for you to cook at home.”
Below, you can see the mess that is my favorite cookbook. This is due in part to the way the book was bound and partly to how much I’ve used it over the past twenty years. I’m not even a vegetarian. However, I love vegetarian foods and this is a wonderful book, despite the falling out pages. When I pick it up, every time, I carefully enfold the disconnected pages and cover pieces and colored photos of different kinds of beans and rice into the main, mostly intact, part of the book.
I keep wishing I had a new copy and someday I’ll get one, perhaps. Meanwhile, I’ll carefully carry around these various pages, because this book is a treasure. It contains so many of the recipes I use over and over again.
It is also the kind of book you can pick up in the middle of the night and start reading because it is full of engaging stories and interesting tidbits of cooking and eating lore from places all over the globe.
Who is Madhur Jaffrey?
Madhur Jaffrey is an Indian-born ”Renaissance woman”. She is a celebrated cook and an award-winning author of a whopping 31 (at least) cookbooks. She is credited with introducing Indian cooking to the Western world with the first of these books, An Invitation to Indian Cooking (1973). She has also written three children's books and a memoir.
Ms. Jaffrey has traveled the world researching food and cooking, has been a travel and food writer, actress, television personality, as well as wife, mother, grandmother. She is still acting in her 80’s. I mean to read her memoir one of these days. It was published in 2008, Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India.
I was impressed to learn that, among several other awards, in 2004, she received a British Order of Chivalry. She was named a member of “The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire “in recognition of her services to cultural relationships between the United Kingdom, India and the United States, through her achievements in film, television, and cookery.”
What is this cookbook about?
The gracious introduction to this 758-page book begins with “This book is written for everyone”. It talks about Ms.Jaffrey’s goal of helping everyone have access to foods from around the world. She talks about a softening of boundaries between national cuisines and ends with this thought.
“I hope my book will open up an international world of new and exciting foods for you to cook and eat. As you turn the pages, you will find old traditional recipes and newly created ones, recipes where new and old ingredients are combined and recipes from one nation that may be made with ingredients from another. That seems to be the kind of world we are living in today”. (Introduction pp viii-ix)
What do I like about this book?
- The author is passionate about cooking and food. Her enthusiasm is contagious. There are stories throughout the book of her experiences traveling, eating, and exploring markets, as well as her own cooking adventures.
- She pays attention to explaining ingredients, their origins, their uses in different countries, noting differences and similarities. She talks about at length and has illustrations for the many different kinds of beans, lentils, and grains in use around the world.
- The author is fussy about some things. I will never cook Basmati rice again without thinking of her remarks about wasting this precious food. She actually gives a separate recipe using plain long grain rice for cooks who have no time to wash and soak the rice. “It is best to use American-style long-grain rice here. It would be a pity to waste the Basmati”.
- She prefers simple preparations. She presents classic dishes from many different cuisines, the very best version, in her opinion. There are many simple and simply delicious recipes throughout the book.
- When she knows an ingredient will be hard to find in Western supermarkets, she offers substitutes whenever possible.
- The recipes often contain unique ethnic ingredients but not a great long list of them, just the essential ones that will give a dish its’ character. In other words, the recipes are meant to be accessible to all, and not to cost a fortune in groceries.
- It is representative of the world of vegetarian cooking and eating. While the author is Indian by birth, she obviously loves foods from many different culinary traditions. You find her enthusiasm in every recipe and story. There are recipes from India, Mexico, China, Japan, Korea, Pakistan, Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Turkey, Nigeria, Costa Rica, to name a few.
There is such a generous helping of cooking and eating in this book, from Miso Soup to Homemade Paneer (Indian Cheese, which is so easy to make), to Moroccan flatbread, to Preserved Lemons or Green Mango Chutney. The book is a treasure trove of international foods and how to make them. She divides the book into sections with Beans, Vegetables (over 200 recipes for vegetables alone), Grains, Dairy, Soups, Salads, and Drinks (like Mango Lassi).
The Sauces and Added Flavorings chapter is a treasure. Many of the spice or seasoning combinations she uses in recipes appear in this chapter. Here there are Ethiopian Aromatic Butter and Afghani Sour Cherry Chutney. There is a Classic Spanish Romesco Sauce and Trinidadian Pepper Sauce. There are pickles and relishes and spice mixtures. At the end of the book, there is also an excellent glossary and list of resources.
Recently I have had time to explore different areas of this book. I have made the Yogurt Cheese with Bananas and Almonds for a different but lovely dessert. Then I tried the Feta and Yogurt Cheese with Herbs on the same page over leftover pasta for lunch. We have fresh beets in the garden now, so there was a perfect opportunity to make warm Beets and Beet Greens with a Horseradish Dressing. There are so many possibilities.
I hope you have a chance to delve into this book. I see there is a hardcover version available now. Perhaps I’ll choose that one for a replacement. Maybe it will have a more durable binding for its 758 pages which, I am sure, will be dog-eared, written-in and spilled-on for several more decades.
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