Vegan

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein's book, Raw.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein's book, Raw.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein's book, Raw.

Wonderfully pure, a "vat" of this stuff lasts about a week, depending on how much you eat each day. Eat as much of the soup as you like, as often as you like.

I am delighted to see broccoli di rape in the supermarket almost year-round and of excellent quality: fresh, bright-green stems and leaves, with tight heads of pale-green florets (don't buy any with yellowed, open flowers). I hope you are familiar with this versatile vegetable — related to both turnips and broccoli — and love its unique bitter-almond taste as much as I do. This warm salad is a particularly easy way to prepare broccoli di rape, and its mild flavor and comforting texture will please even those family members who are wary of new vegetables!

(Sharbat-e gol-e Mohammadi) Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Najmieh Batmanglij's's book New Food Of Life. Batmanglij also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. To read more about Batmanglij and Persian cuisine, click here.

Every Israeli has an opinion about falafel, the ultimate Israeli street food, which is most often served stuffed into pita bread.

Chimichurri This recipe is excerpted from Shirley Lomax Brooks's book Argentina Cooks! We've also added some tips of our own below. Chimichurri is an absolute requirement for the famous Argentine asado or barbecue. The recipe for chimichurri that follows is only one of many, but it is typical of those you will find in the Pampas. Some locals use it as a salad dressing as well. And don't limit your chimichurri to asado; serve it with any broiled or roasted meat or poultry.

Idlee is the world-famous south Indian breakfast or tiffin treat.

In winter we use a variety of greens and winter vegetables to make interesting salads that taste fresh, refresh our palates, and aren't trying to reproduce the delicate leafy greens of the summer.

(Marillenglasur) Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Rick Rodgers's book Kaffeehaus: The Best Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague. To read more about Austrian cooking, click here. This recipe originally accompanied Sachertorte. Fruit glazes — easily prepared from preserves — add flavor, protect crisp crusts from getting soft in contact with moist fillings, and provide a slick undercoat that adds extra sheen when another glaze is poured over the dessert. Apricot and red currant are the most versatile, as their acidity balances the sweetness of the dessert, but you can use another favorite flavor, if you wish. Just be sure to use preserves, and not jam or jelly, which have different fruit-sugar ratios. The preserves must be simmered for a few minutes to evaporate excess liquid and give a firm, slick finish to the glazed dessserts. It's best to turn an entire 12-ounce jar of preserves into glaze, storing the glaze in the empty preserves jar, so you have small amounts ready when needed.

This fruit butter makes a quick dessert. It's also a great snack on bread or toast. We use it in a low-fat recipe for a moist and chunky apple butter spice cake. We have found preserving in half-pint (250 mL) jars convenient, since that recipe calls for that amount of apple butter. But if you use larger jars, you'll have lots left for other uses.

Makedonitiki Melitzanosalata Editor's note: The recipe below is excerpted from Diane Kochilas's book The Greek Vegetarian. Kochilas also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. To read more about Kochilas and Greek cuisine, click here.

Jalapeño peppers and a double hit of mint liven up traditional mint jelly. Try it with crackers and cheese and with lamb or chicken.

Although the marinade sounds similar to several of those given for tofu, it's just different enough that, when used on the completely different tempeh, you have a wholly distinct, and wholly delicious, dish. This is a base preparation. Use the baked tempeh as part of a component plate, sauced or unsauced, cut up as the filling for spring rolls with tempeh, added to a vegetable stir-fry, or as the centerpiece of a hearty sandwich. Traditional Indonesian flavorings for such a marinade are salt water (in lieu of tamari or shoyu soy sauce), fresh pressed garlic, and dried coriander.

(Uborkasalata) With little or no refrigeration and often only impure water available until the twentieth century, ordinary people did not risk eating fresh vegetables that couldn't be peeled or shelled. Cucumber, beet, or cabbage salads were about the only ones used in Eastern Europe, and cooked salads featuring eggplant or broiled peppers were served in many Mediterranean countries. Lettuce, the base of most crisp salads we eat today, had to be cleaned in sterilized water and eaten immediately.

(Idlee Sambaar) Editor's note: These instructions are excerpted from Julie Sahni's book Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking. Sahni also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. Idlee sambaar is one of the great classic dishes of Indian vegetarian cooking. The dish consists of split peas in a spicy vegetable sauce that is a slightly milder version of the lentil and vegetable stew called sambaar. Radish and onion are the primary vegetables used to make this sauce, because their distict fragrance provides a marvelous contrast to the dumplings. Idlee sambaar traditionally are served in a generous amount of sauce in individual soup plates. Other spicy accompaniments, such as coconut chutney , Red Gun Powder (see tips, below), and hot-spicy pickles are also traditional. In India idlee sambaar are always served at tiffin or brunch.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Crescent Dragonwagon's book Passionate Vegetarian. Dragonwagon also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. This is fast and seriously good. Weird as it sounds, try it once and you'll come back to it. Children are thrilled with it too. It's virtually instant to put together, but it does need to simmer for 15 minutes. If you get really crunched, forgo sautéing the onion. Now to the recipe's provenance. I'll bet my Aunt Gloria—my father's sister—is going to be astonished that I still have the recipe for the meatballs with the totally bizarre but inexplicably delicious cranberry-and-tomato sauce that she gave me back in 1969, and that that self-same recipe has been converted, to surface again almost 30 years later with seitan. You end up with a sweet-sour sauce, given attitude by the horseradish. It's still a wildly improbable combination, still easy, still infinitely better than it has any right to be. Serve over pasta or any cooked grain or with mashed potatoes.

To dress up a typical watercress salad for the holidays, Santibañez added orange segments, avocados, and a sweet-tangy pomegranate dressing.