Robertson - Vegan planet, revised edition : 425 irresistible recipes with fantastic flavors from home and around the world

The Harvard Common Press
www.harvardcommonpress.com

Copyright 2014 by Robin Robertson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Robertson, Robin.

Vegan planet : more than 425 irresistible recipes with fantastic flavors from home and around the world / Robin Robertson. -- Revised edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-55832-831-0 (pbk.)

1. Vegan cooking. 2. International cooking. I. Title.

TX837.R6253 2014
641.5636--dc23

2013022919

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eISBN 978-1-558-32832-7
v1.1213

For the animals

I am indebted to many people who have helped to make this revised edition of Vegan Planet as good as it can be. First and foremost I want to thank the many readers and fans of the first edition for helping to make Vegan Planet a classic.

Many thanks to my recipe testers who tested the new and revised recipes for this edition: Melissa Chapman, Zsu Dever, Lyndsay Orwig, Jonathan and Nancy Shanes, Lori Maffei, and Barbara Bryan. I appreciate your enthusiasm and your helpful feedback more than I can say.

I want to again express my very special appreciation to Neal Barnard, MD, of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), for his compassionate spirit and vital work and for writing the foreword to this book. Thanks also to Jen Keller, RD, of PCRM, for her assistance with nutritional information.

My gratitude goes to my husband, Jon Robertson, for his unwavering support and encouragement. An extra-special thank-you goes to Jenna Patton for her valued assistance, and many thanks also to Dianne Wenz for her help.

Much appreciation goes to my agent, Stacey Glick of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, and the team at The Harvard Common Press: Bruce Shaw, Dan Rosenberg, Adam Salomone, Emily Geaman, Virginia Downes, Pat Jalbert-Levine, Karen Wise, Vicki Rowland, and Michelle Thompson. Your hard work and enthusiasm for this new edition of Vegan Planet means the world to me.

As you page through the recipes in this bookfrom appetizers to dessertsyoull find that not only are they mouthwateringly delicious, but these great-tasting foods can change your life.

In research studies at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, DC, we have put various diets to the test. Whether our goal is cutting cholesterol levels, taming diabetes or high blood pressure, or trimming waistlines, the clear winner is a low-fat, vegan diet. As savory as spaghetti marinara, split pea soup, or rice pilaf may be, they are also incredibly powerful for health. They contain no animal fat and no cholesterolif they are properly made. And that means that they, along with other vegan foods, can tackle cholesterol problems like no other diet can, and weight loss kicks in effortlessly without the need to impose any artificial calorie limiteven when people do not change their exercise routines.

Young people who eat this way can stay trim and healthy and keep their arteries open throughout life. Older people whose unhealthy diets may have already brought on health problemsheart disease, for examplecan use these foods to get a new lease on life. The research studies of Dr. Dean Ornish and his colleagues at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute showed that diets based on plant foods rather than animal products actually reversed existing heart disease in more than 80 percent of participants without medications or surgery. We have shown that this same sort of diet helps many people with type 2 diabetes to reduce their medications or even stop them completely. Other researchers have found much the same benefit for people with high blood pressure.

A vegan diet is as close to a perfect menu as you can have. Unfortunately, many people have made wrong turns. A switch from red meat to white meat, for example, does not do the job. If a person scrupulously limits meat intake to no more than six ounces per day, choosing only chicken and fish while trimming away visible fat, and chooses skim over whole milk and egg whites over whole eggs, the results are embarrassingly modest. Cholesterol levels fall by only about 5 percent. Body weight and blood pressure improve only modestly. Inside the arteries, blockages continue to worsen. All in all, there is little reward for all this effort. Americans now eat, believe it or not, 1 million chickens per hour, and collectively we are more out of shape than at any time in our nations history.

A vegan diet puts health into high gear, cutting cholesterol by 20 to 25 percent, trimming body weight by a pound or more per week, and helping most people with diabetes or high blood pressure free themselves from their medications.

If you are tempted to put it to the test, I suggest that you take a week or two and try out as many of these delicious recipes as you can. Then, when youve found your favorites, block out a three-week period to eat low-fat, vegan foods exclusively. Dont dabble with itdo it all the way. As you get started, your body will begin to transform itself. In all likelihood, youll start to lose weight, your cholesterol level will fall, your energy will improve, and youll feel better than youve felt since you were a kid. After three weeks, see how you feel. If you like the feeling of a trimmer, healthier body, you can stick with itand you now have the tools you need to do it.

These foods give you a chance to be on as perfect a diet as humanly possible, and your body will be delighted that you made this choice. Robin has done a magnificent job in bringing this volume together, and I hope you enjoy Vegan Planet as much as I have.

Neal D. Barnard, MD
President, Physicians Committee
for Responsible Medicine

Vegan is the new vegetarian. What was once considered a fringe offshoot of vegetarianism is now a household word, with many celebrities embracing a vegan lifestyle. It also is easier to enjoy a vegan diet now than ever before. Vegan-friendly ingredients are becoming more visible in natural foods stores and many supermarkets, and creative vegan cookbooks are showing up on bookshelves everywhere. Although the vegetarian menu choices of many restaurants remain dairy-laden, vegan selections are becoming more widely available. At the same time, upscale vegan restaurants in metropolitan areas are thriving.

Those of us who enjoy a plant-based diet are often quizzed with questions such as these: Do you live on salad? No meat or dairy at all? What do you eat? And, of course, Where do you get your protein?

The more than 425 recipes in this revised edition of Vegan Planet are my answer to those questions.

Quite simply, a well-balanced vegan diet can provide all of the nutrition we need with astonishingly varied recipes. The truth is there is a world of choice in the vegan diet. In fact, I hesitate to use the word diet because it may imply austerity or deprivation, and a vegan diet is anything but that. In this book, fresh vegetables and fruits, whole grains, beans, and nuts are used to make infinitely varied, full-flavored dishes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and everything in between.

Chapter 1 introduces the basics of a vegan diet, from its history and health benefits to an overview of ingredients, cooking tips, and basic recipes. From there, you will discover that by creatively using a variety of vegetables, beans, grains, and other healthful ingredients, you can make soups, stews, entres, breads, and even desserts that are satisfying and deliciousgood food that just happens to be meatless and dairy-free. From