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Vintage Veg
Lessons From a Cookbook That Isn’t a Classic
‘Mexican Vegetarian Cooking’ is dated, but we have to know where we’ve been to see where we’re going
When it comes to plant-based cooking, there is sometimes as much to learn from a cookbook of questionable contemporary quality as there is from one that provides insight that takes one’s cooking to new heights. The recent history of meatless cooking has undergone such transformation in recent years — while there have always been great vegetarian and vegan cookbooks, there is some undeniable truth to complaints about a certain older style of cooking: over-reliance on soy, lax treatment of non-Western culinary traditions, and mediocre seasoning.
In the ’80s, the Vermont-based Healing Arts Press put out a series of “ethnic vegetarian cooking” texts, such as Greek Vegetarian Cooking, Indian Vegetarian Cooking, Italian Vegetarian Cooking, Vegetables the French Way, and the very of-its-time title Oriental Vegetarian Cooking. This is the sort of history we might prefer to forget, but it’s as essential to the evolution of meatless cuisine as any more compelling text. We need to know where we’ve been in order to understand where we’re going.
