ODonnel - PNW veg: 100 vegetable recipes inspired by the local bounty of the Pacific Northwest

T WO YEARS AGO, MY EDITOR, S USAN R OXBOROUGH , approached me about writing a vegetarian cookbook with a Northwest focus. At the time, I was unsure what that might entail. As the author of two previously published vegetarian cookbooks, I had navigated the terrain of meatless cooking specifically with the omnivore in mind and an emphasis on less (rather than no) meat. But I wondered: was there enough plant matter to explore this regionally? After all, like so many others, when asked to name ingredients that make the Pacific Northwest distinctive, my thoughts immediately turned to wild salmon and other cold-water sea creatures, with berries a close second. Vegetablesnot so much.

After that meeting, I started carrying a notebook, jotting down the produce that I had come to love since moving to Seattle from the other Washington in 2008. Right away I noticed a very different lineup at local farmers markets. In Virginia, my prior home, local legumes were limited to green beans and fresh lima beans or hull peasall delicious but in relatively short supply. Now my legume choices included black beans, chickpeas, and pinto beans, sold at a fair price. As a part-time vegetarian, I frequently cooked with beans and lentils, but little did I know about the legume paradise that awaited me. The Palouse regiona lush area that spans Eastern Washington and northern Idahois essentially the countrys bread basket for chickpeas and is a top producer of lentils.

To explore the book through a gluten-free or vegan (no dairy, eggs, or honey) lens, look for the following icons in the top corner of the recipes:

gf = Gluten-Free

V = Vegan

I noticed that fall produce went on for a good long timesometimes right up to Thanksgiving, which meant late peppers, eggplants, and the last of the tomatoes. Even winter, which is typically a dead zone back East, provided hardy greens like kale and collards, and frost-resistant roots like sunchokes. And no one need wait for asparagus to give the sign that spring has arrived: the Northwest has stinging nettle as its sirenminers lettuce and wild watercress too. All of this is for the taking. But almost nothing compares to a Northwest summer, when the sun stays out late and the produce is, in a word, magnificent.

My notebook scribblings made me realize that it wasnt just easy to eat vegetarian in the land of the geoduck and the Dungeness crab, it was extraordinary. From the misty forests of mushrooms and fiddlehead ferns along the Olympic Peninsula to the orchards of the Hood River fruit loop, from the fertile prairies of the Palouse to the artichoke-friendly Mediterranean climate of the Oregon coast, the agricultural diversity and abundance of this region is difficult to surpass.

It was easy to say yes to this book. And because of the bounty of Americas left corner pocket, it has been easy to call the Northwest home. It is where I do much more than dabble in local produce; I live by it.

With this plant-first collection, I take you on my vegetable adventures, in which I dig deep into what makes this land of abundance so delicious. I hope you enjoy cooking from this book as much as I did cooking it up.

how this book is organized

There are nine chapters on the pages that follow. I serve up some of the traditional coursesstarters, soups, and saladsalong with a hefty lineup of beans, eggs, lentils, and tofu in a chapter called Protein. The Sweet Endings chapter isnt just fruit forwardin addition to huckleberries, you might find parsnips or beets in your cake or lentils in your cookies.