Robin Robertson - Robin Robertsons Vegan Without Borders Easy Everyday Meals from Around the World

For the animals

Other Books by Robin Robertson

Quick-Fix Vegan
More Quick-Fix Vegan
Quick-Fix Vegetarian
1,000 Vegan Recipes
Hot Vegan
Fresh from the Vegan Slow Cooker
Vegan on the Cheap
The Nut Butter Cookbook
One Dish Vegan
Vegan Planet
Party Vegan
The Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Book

Contents

PART I A Vegan Kitchen Without Borders

PART II The Recipes

PART III Recipes by Category, Menus, Resources

Acknowledgments

There are so many hands and hearts I want to acknowledge, beginning with my mother who taught me how to cook intuitively (I never once saw her use a measuring spoon or cup!) and my father who sparked my sense of culinary adventure.

To the many friends, neighbors, home cooks, and restaurant chefs all over the world who, over the years, have shared with me their knowledge, their secret ingredients, and their enthusiasm for cookingI thank you.

I also must express a special thanks to the most amazing group of recipe testers, who cooked their way around the world to help make this book what it is: Barbara Bryan, Melissa Chapman, Zsu Dever, Lea Jacobson, Lyndsay Orwig, and Jonathan and Nancy Shanes. If there were a Hall of Fame for recipe testers, surely you would all be inducted.

Much gratitude to the fabulous team at Andrews McMeel for believing in this project and for helping to make this book as wonderful and beautiful as it is, with special thanks to my editor, Jean Lucas; publisher, Kirsty Melville; Julie Barnes, Dave Shaw, Carol Coe, and Andrea Shores.

I also want to thank photographer Sara Remington for bringing her talent to this project and making my recipes look good enough to eat right off the page.

An extra special thanks to my husband Jon for sharing my passion for exploring global cuisines and for helping to make the world a more compassionate place. My love for you is without borders.

Many thanks, also, to my agent and friend, Stacey Glick of Dystel & Goderich Literary Agency, for her many years of support for my work and for helping me navigate in the world of publishing.

I want to express my appreciation to all my friends, fans, and supporters for inspiring me to keep on keeping on. And, finally, lots of love and hugs to my wonderful cats (you know who you are) for bringing joy to my life each day.

Introduction

I began my professional cooking career more than thirty years ago, working my way up the ranks from line cook, to sous chef, and finally the chef at several restaurants, including a French restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina. Eventually I realized that I no longer wanted to work in restaurants or eat animal products. On the same day that I left the restaurant business, I started on the road to a vegan lifestyle and decided to devote my time and talents to developing techniques for preparing great-tasting traditional fare with plant-based ingredients.

Soon after going vegan in 1987, I attended a family gathering where my Italian and Eastern European relatives were serving a variety of ethnic foods. Assuming there would be little for me to eat in the midst of two dozen card-carrying meat eaters, I was elated to discover that many of the family specialties were naturally and traditionally vegan. After enjoying my fill of caponata bruschetta, lentil salad, and halushki, I began to explore the potential for vegan dishes and vegan-convertible gems in cuisines all over the world.

I spent the next twenty-five years exploring international cuisines in cities throughout the United States and as far away as Italy. No sooner would I try a Gujarati restaurant or a Thai noodle shop than Id begin researching and learning the cooking style so I could make those heavenly meals at home, using my culinary skills and background to develop the best ways to adapt the dishes.

From samosas to sushi to Stroganoff, I fell in love with scores of international recipes that I just couldntand still cantget enough of. These became the recipes I wanted to share one day in a special cookbook of my all-time favorites. The book would be a pastiche of plant-based delights from all over the world. The phrase vegan without borders sat in my idea file for a long time.

More than twenty cookbooks later, the idea is a reality in what has turned out to be my most personal cookbook to date. Vegan Without Borders is the culmination of my years of restaurant experience, family recipes, travels, and more than ten years of writing the Global Vegan column for VegNews Magazine. Some of the recipes in this book are inspired by the insights and recipes shared with me by many talented cooks Ive met over the years, from friends and neighbors who showed me how to prepare their family specialties to colleagues and restaurant chefs who shared a secret ingredient or tip along the way.

I call my collection Vegan Without Borders because fantastic flavors know no boundaries, and neither do most vegans when it comes to enjoying great-tasting food. Because many global cuisines are free of the meat-and-potato constraints of the typical Standard American Diet (SAD), food-loving vegans are naturally attracted to the dishes of other cultures, from our love affair with all things hummus to chowing down on bean burritos, or savoring fragrant vegetable stir-fries made with tofu done right.

Many of the recipes, such as Umbrian contains no dairy. In many cases, I substitute ingredients that are close to the original. For example, I list the original ingredient but also suggest a substitute, such as using grated lime zest instead of less accessible kaffir lime leaves. It was important for me to find the best possible substitutes for otherwise hard-to-find ingredients to enable more people to enjoy preparing these recipes at home.

My goal with Vegan Without Borders isnt to give you a comprehensive or encyclopedic collection, but to offer my most loved recipes from Europe, Africa, India, Asia, and the Americas, as found in about twenty different cuisines. While the cuisines of many countries feature prominently, there are others that are absent. This is not intended as a slight against any particular cuisineI just happen to especially adore the food of the regions featured in this book, and I hope you will, too.

Many of the recipes are especially quick to make, low in fat, gluten free, and/or soy free, or have easy options to make them so. Each of these special features is indicated on the recipe pages. An easy-to-use index of the recipes grouped .

The recipes are intentionally not organized by type of meal (entrees, appetizers, soups, etc.), but by global region, such as Asia and Europe. Within those regions, they are arranged by country. This organization allows you to make any recipe you wish as a stand-alone dish. However, if you want to make a complete meal in a particular cuisine, I also provide so you can easily find recipes of the same national origin. At the same time, I encourage you to mix and match recipes from various cuisines.

Each section begins with my own take on the particular countrys cuisine to give readers a better understanding of the region, particular ingredients, and flavors. Further understanding of various ingredients can be found in the . I also provide shopping lists of essential ingredients native to the cuisine, which will help you achieve authenticity on your own. Because naturally vegan dishes can be found in many cuisines around the world, vegans tend to have adventuresome palates. But lots of other people, including omnivores, are also looking for healthy, inexpensive, and innovative recipes. The recipes in