Cafe Flora Cookbook
Seattle's popular vegetarian restaurant shares its recipes with fans of meatless cooking. What sets this book apart from so many other vegetarian cookbooks is its attempt to take this branch of cookery beyond the usual melange of steamed and stewed greens into more decidedly haute cuisine. Portobello Wellington lacks the beef and foie gras of the parent dish, but its accompanying sophisticated Madeira sauce marks it as more complex than just mushroom-stuffed pastry. For a stunning brunch dish, Geier turns a quesadilla inside out, coating the potato and cheese-stuffed tortilla with a layer of scrambled eggs. Goan curry uses chickpeas and a welter of freshly toasted spices and homemade vindaloo paste to achieve its effect. A welter of pizza recipes shows how adaptable basic pizza can be to a host of different interpretations, some savory, others sweet. Many recipes, specially marked, satisfy vegan requirements; but dairy products and eggs abound throughout most dishes. Meat substitutes such as seitan appear only rarely. Oddly enough, there are no dessert recipes.Mark KnoblauchCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved