Is there a vegetarian Alison Roman?

December 19, 2021 7:51 PM

So, Alison Roman's two cookbooks and some of her online recipes changed my cooking life. They're this perfect balance of unfussy and fancy enough to make me feel accomplished. They're fun and informal, but the results make an impression. They really added to my confidence as a cook. Aaaand they're very meat-heavy and I'm thinking of cutting back in the new year. I may need a new cookbook. A few more details under the fold.

I guess what I want is maybe best defined in terms of what I DON'T want: I don't want crazy Ottolenghi-like stuff with a thousand ingredients and a thousand steps. On the other hand, I devoutly do not want hippie vegetarian cuisine. I had Moosewood in college. I do not want Moosewood. I hate a bean sprout.

Probably not interested in vegan cooking. For the moment, dairy feels like a good compromise if I'm cutting down on meat.

Anything spring to mind? Thanks in advance!

posted by less-of-course to Food & Drink (25 answers total)

Pretty sure you want Deborah Madison’s cookbooks. She has a fair few, including the must have Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone, but my definite favorite is Vegetable Literacy, which includes a few meaty accents and does a wonderful job of making very mundane ingredients feel seasonal and special through careful flavor pairing and technique.
posted by Mizu at 7:58 PM on December 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

I really like Appetite for Reduction. Even though the recipes are vegan, you can easily add dairy to many of them if you want. Despite the title, none of the recipes I have tried have tasted or felt like they are deliberately skimping on calories, either.
posted by rpfields at 8:53 PM on December 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

maybe Joshua McFadden's Six Seasons
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:17 PM on December 19, 2021 [7 favorites]

oh, you know what would be just right: Abra Berens' Ruffage
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:18 PM on December 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

i feel similarly about some of the alison roman recipe and i was coming to recommend six seasons. you might also like simply julia.
posted by wowenthusiast at 9:22 PM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Six Seasons and Ruffage were two of the three that I was going to recommend as well! They are awesome and really are vegetable drive but aren't books that are unapproachable and certainly have solid production values. The third one I would mention is Eating from the Ground Up by Alana Chernila. It's vegetable forward but brings in other ingredients where it makes sense.
posted by Carillon at 9:43 PM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Possibly How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman?
posted by vunder at 9:45 PM on December 19, 2021 [9 favorites]

We bought One Pan, One Pot, One Planet by Anna Jones a few months ago and have cooked from it at least twice a week since. Vegetarian, easy, flavourful, simple ingredients (a lot of fresh herbs though).
posted by third word on a random page at 10:11 PM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

I really love Abra Beren's Ruffage (mentioned above) and her new book Grist. Neither is strictly vegetarian but meat is a really more of a spice in both - not the thrust of anything, and the recipes are fantastic.

Lately I've also been loving Nigel Slater's Greenfeast: Autumn, Winter. All veg, very minimal recipes that encourage you to be unfussy and fill in the gaps yourself - I find myself being far less precious and precise simply because the recipes give lots of room for variation and intuition, and trusts you to do it. I was tricked into making a savory galette on a weeknight simply from a great description and an approachable recipe, so there I was making dough, and it was 1) great and 2) super achievable.
posted by Special Agent Dale Cooper at 10:16 PM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Maybe you'd like Deb Perelman's style? She has 2 cookbooks out, also a blog Smitten Kitchen that has recipes going back several years. She does have meat recipes, but a lot are vegetable-based, and fairly unfussy. The blog has a good search function, too. I'm making her broccoli slaw and sweet corn spoonbread for Christmas eve dinner.
posted by dorey_oh at 12:46 AM on December 20, 2021 [8 favorites]

+1 for Deb Perelman and Smitten Kitchen. I haven’t read her cookbooks but I’ve been using recipes from her blog for many years and her recipes are approachable and work well.
posted by vivzan at 4:48 AM on December 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

just curious, which recipes of hers were big game changers? thanks!
posted by maca at 5:13 AM on December 20, 2021

I am going to nth Deb and Smitten Kitchen. She has two books and a million recipes on her site.

After spending a few years wondering why her recipes jibe so well with my eating habits, I discovered she's a former vegetarian. So while she does use meat, most of her recipes are approachable, impressive, worth making, and not meat-centric.

There are the recipes that just now caught my eye in my recipe file, though they might not all be great matches for winter in the northern hemisphere, if that's where you are.

https://smittenkitchen.com/2020/01/roasted-squash-and-tofu-with-ginger/
https://smittenkitchen.com/2008/01/rigatoni-with-eggplant-puree/
https://smittenkitchen.com/2021/06/zucchini-butter-spaghetti/
https://smittenkitchen.com/2017/05/broccoli-rubble-farro-salad/
https://smittenkitchen.com/2016/07/corn-bacon-and-parmesan-pasta/
posted by fruitslinger at 6:37 AM on December 20, 2021 [2 favorites]

I've been having good vegetarian luck with Chinese cooking--Omnivore's Cookbook and Woks of Life online and Every Grain of Rice for a cookbook. You will have to buy some extra sauces but they keep.

Also, Falastin is the only Ottolenghi cookbook I've ever been able to deal with and it has some tasty vegetarian recipes within (with under ten ingredients).
posted by kingdead at 7:25 AM on December 20, 2021

nthing Deborah Madison, who hits the sweet spot between day-long expedition Ottolenghi and Moosewood, and Nigel Slater, e.g. Kitchen Diaries, which are not exclusively vegetarian, but are good on cooking by mood and season.

The old-school option I'd throw your way is Laurel's Kitchen (or The New Laurel's Kitchen) which are "what if Moosewood but driven by Californian food culture?" -- similar to Green's, which is where Madison started.

The Guardian's vegetarian section is a go-to for me, and it includes a lot of Slater, but also Meera Sodha's new vegan and Thomasina Meirs' new flexitarian. Sodhi's vegan take on ghormeh sabzi is legit and pretty fancy. (And Ottolenghi's older "new vegetarian" Guardian recipes are sometimes a lot simpler than his cookbook ones.)

You can also get a lot out of regional cookbooks. Southern Indian cooking is an obvious choice, but I also like ones from the Mediterranean and Middle East: Claudia Roden is always good; Reem Kassis is good; Yasmin Khan is good.
posted by holgate at 7:32 AM on December 20, 2021 [2 favorites]

My go-to is Small Victories by Julia Turshen.

For vegetarian South Indian: Dakshin (but cut all the hot peppers to a third or a sixth).
posted by sixswitch at 7:41 AM on December 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

Meat substitutes have come a long way. Maybe try replacing meat with a plant-based version in some of your favorites from your existing cookbooks? I strongly endorse seitan versions of chicken/beef, and many of the plant-based sausages available are really delicious.
posted by acridrabbit at 10:12 AM on December 20, 2021

Nthing Smitten Kitchen, and another website I find myself going to whenever I can't figure out what to make: 101 Cookbooks. The author also has several cookbooks, but I haven't tried them out yet. As with Smitten Kitchen, the website is well designed for browsing by season, ingredient, or occasion.
posted by quatsch at 11:55 AM on December 20, 2021 [3 favorites]

I’m only familiar with Roman by reputation, but the Vedge cookbook is absolutely where I go for vegetarian food that is delicious and presents a little fancy but is actually simple to make. The cookbook & restaurant are vegan, but I sub in dairy when fake dairy is called for and it hasn’t not worked yet.
posted by CtrlAltDelete at 12:16 PM on December 20, 2021

Another vote for Nigel Slater. Loved Kitchen Diaries for seasonal eating but sounds like Greenfeast is right up your alley.
posted by Concordia at 1:26 PM on December 20, 2021

Response by poster: Thanks for all the suggestions!

just curious, which recipes of hers were big game changers?

Oh, let's see. There's a pork shoulder with harissa that was easy but gave me that feeling of having cooked something impressive. There was swordfish with olives that made me feel like cooking fish is not so forbidding. The ground lamb with a ton of cumin and greens and chick peas felt like a lot of different things to do the first time I made it and now is so easy we're sort of tired of it. The labneh cake with Ritz cracker crust...it was just a cumulative feeling of being able to make something where if I went to someone's house and they made it, I'd think they were a good cook.
posted by less-of-course at 1:55 PM on December 20, 2021

Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian is a great compilation of recipes - it's definitely my go to for e.g. "what do I do with this vegetable box" because it covers every kind of vegetable, and it ranges from really nice weeknight quick meals to some more elaborate projects - her food feels fancy and tasty.

Rukmini Iyer's Green Roasting Tin is all one pan meals that you can pop straight into the oven with a lot of variety in flavour/texture/vegetable.

Olive Trees and Honey is Jewish vegetarian food - the artichoke egg souffle thing in there is so damn good and it has several standbys.

Seconding the Guardian's vegetarian recipe section as well as Nigel Slater!
posted by MarianHalcombe at 2:01 PM on December 20, 2021

Nthing Smitten Kitchen - her recipes are unfussy and vegetable focused, although I find the bluff to have more vegetarian recipes than the cookbooks. An anti-recommendation for Six Seasons. The recipes are great, but I find them fussy due to a reliance on multiple types of fresh herbs. They're also not really vegetarian: they either include meat/fish or require an additional accompaniment to feel like a full meal (with the suggested addition invariably being non-veg). The recipes are great, but non-fussy vegetarian they're not
posted by matildatakesovertheworld at 9:01 AM on December 21, 2021

i really like meera sodha's the new vegan column in the guardian. most of her recipes feel more accidentally vegan, than purposeful, but she's got a lot of great looking veggie weekday meals that i commonly go back to.
posted by zsh2v1 at 12:32 PM on December 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

Noor Murad and Yotam Ottolenghi's "Shelf Love" is kind of a quick and fancy veggie mashup of Ottolenghi and Alison Roman. Lots of anchovies but you can sub capers. Many of the recipes are veggie and many of them have vegan substitutions listed. Some sample recipes here.
posted by papayaninja at 7:36 PM on December 24, 2021 [2 favorites]