New crop of vegetarian recipes

CONCORD, N.H. — Vegetarian cookbooks seem to come in dribs and drabs.

In any given year, perhaps a dozen will cross my desk, usually one, sometimes two at a time. Unlike books on baking and pastries, which seem to flood my mailbox this time of year, veg cookbooks appear to have no season.

Until this year, that is. During the past month alone, five new vegetarian or vegan books have come my way. Rather than hypothesize on what this means, I'll simply accept it as a good sign and share my thoughts on each.

"Raw Food Made Easy" (Book Publishing Co., 2005, $16.95) by Jennifer Cornbleet.

Regular readers of this column know I think little of the raw-foods movement. It's such a ludicrously labor-intensive way to prepare food I can't imagine anyone actually eats this way.

For that reason, I wasn't even going to look at Cornbleet's book. Others who have promised ease (sandwiches that take just 18 hours to prepare!) have failed miserably, and I wasn't inclined to waste more time on this nonsense.

But a reader familiar with my thoughts on this took the time to write and tell me this book actually delivers, so I relented.

Cornbleet explains in the introduction that she strives to provide a middle ground between the most basic raw foods (what the rest of us call produce) and the nightmares that inhabit other cookbooks (some recipes take days).

Sad to say, I still wasn't impressed. The first section has recipes for things like lemon juice, crushed garlic and (my favorite) minced parsley. Do we really need a recipe for minced parsley? Doesn't the name sort of imply the method?

Some of the juices sound interesting (including the pina colada smoothie), and the salsas, pates and salads mostly seem reasonable (and, I'll confess, fast). But she lost me with the sandwiches.

The guacamole sandwich, for example, is half a cup of guacamole and a few slices of tomato between — and I'm not making this up — two slices of lettuce. It feels more like a Saturday Night Live skit than a meal. I gave up after that.

"New Vegetarian" (Ryland, Peters & Small, 2005, $16.95) by Celia Brooks Brown.

Hands down the most gorgeous new book of the bunch. But then, this publisher's books usually are.