Paper Palate

The Moosewood Collective (the nineteen interlinked owners of Upstate New York’s 33-year-old vegetarian Moosewood Restaurant) just wheeled out a fresh printing of their Moosewood Restaurant Cooks for A Crowd. Together, this group of “musicians, singers, dancers, actors, performers, mediators, meditators, activists, teachers, trainers, consultants, writers, gardeners, editors, poets, artists, quilters, calligraphers, martial arts instructors and enthusiasts, health advocates, parents, grandparents, good cooks, and really good eaters” has authored eleven revered, earthy, all-vegetarian cookbooks including Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers, Moosewood Restaurant New Classics, and Moosewood Restaurant Kitchen Garden.

The original Moosewood Cookbook, however, was not authored by the collective but by a sole founding member, Mollie Katzen. Katzen has gone on to be incredibly enterprising, selling millions of cookbooks, hosting four different cooking shows, and now partnering with Harvard University on a lofty new program for students called the “Food Literacy Initiative.” That first edition of The Moosewood Cookbook, published just four years into the famous restaurant’s life story in 1977, is gospel for many vegetarians (from many generations). But too many meat-eaters have been unfairly skeptical of the Moosewood doctrine. “Yet this is not an exclusive message for vegetarians!” declares Katzen in the introduction to one of her books, The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest. “What I find from traveling around the country, listening and talking to many people about food–as well as from the mail I receive–is that an ever-increasing number of people who don’t identify themselves at all as vegetarian are interested in eating less meat.” That statement is even more true now than it was when Katzen wrote The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest in 2000 (not to mention the old Enchanted Broccoli Forest, in 1982).

I know that I had been dismissive of vegetarian cooking for too long. I finally decided that I needed a book to show me how to broaden my use of fresh vegetables, as well as spectacularly versatile ingredients like beans, grains, tofu, and eggs. Anything Moosewood-related would have done the job, and it happened that my library had Katzen’s most recent ode to the broccoli forest on display with a collection of “Notable Nonfiction” titles. Enchanted Broccoli is indeed a notable piece of writing: it’s charmingly conversational, peppered with clever insights such as “greens should be dressed only at the very last minute. Otherwise, sogginess.” It’s also a remarkable achievement from a bookmaking perspective alone: Katzen is known for doing all of her own illustrations, and this recipe collection is entirely hand-written (a process from which the author has retired). Katzen is quite remarkable for adapting very specific ethnic recipes to her purposes while keeping them authentic. I’ll be cooking her avocado enchiladas, spinach kugel, and cheddar spoonbread very soon.