🥦 Vegetarian Recipes — Meat-Free Cooking
Vegetarian recipes without meat — delicious and satisfying dishes with eggs, dairy, and vegetables. Healthy and easy cooking.
Mushroom Stroganoff
The meat-free version of the Russian classic: a mix of mushrooms seared hard in butter until deeply browned, then folded into a sauce of paprika, mustard and soured cream and served over noodles.
Pasta ai Funghi
Pasta with mushrooms cooked trifolati, the Italian way — fried hard in olive oil with garlic and parsley until browned, deepened with a handful of dried porcini and finished with butter and cheese.
Naan
The soft, blistered flatbread of North Indian tandoors, made at home in a very hot pan: a yeasted dough enriched with yoghurt and milk, cooked until it puffs and chars in spots, then brushed with garlic butter.
Onion Bhaji
Crisp, lacy fritters of sliced onion bound in a spiced gram-flour batter: a rainy-season snack from western India and a fixture of every British curry house, best eaten straight from the oil.
Vegetable Samosas
India's best-known street snack: crisp, blistered pastry folded into cones around spiced potato and peas, fried slowly so the crust stays flaky, and eaten hot with tamarind chutney.
Masala Chai
India's spiced milk tea — black tea boiled with milk, sugar, fresh ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and pepper the way street-corner tea sellers make it, strong enough to stand up to the milk.
Hot Chocolate
Proper hot chocolate made with chopped dark chocolate, not powder — melted into hot milk with a little cocoa and sugar and whisked until glossy and thick enough to coat a spoon.
Greek Frappé
Greece's summer coffee, born at the 1957 Thessaloniki fair — instant coffee shaken hard with sugar and a little water into a thick, stable foam, then topped up with ice, cold water and milk.
Mango Lassi
The Punjabi yoghurt drink — ripe mango blended with cold yoghurt, milk and a pinch of cardamom into a thick, chilled glass that tames a hot curry or stands in for breakfast.
Grilled Cheese Sandwich
The American lunchtime classic — mature cheddar between two slices of buttered bread, fried slowly in a pan until the outside is crisp and deep golden and the cheese runs.
Porridge
The Scottish breakfast — oats simmered slowly with milk, water and a pinch of salt and stirred until thick and creamy, then finished with berries and a drizzle of honey.
Chilaquiles Rojos
Mexico's breakfast for using up yesterday's tortillas — crisp fried tortilla wedges tossed in a red chilli and tomato salsa, topped with fried eggs, crumbled cheese, cream, onion and coriander.
Ptiche Mlyako (Floating Islands)
Bird's milk, the Balkan floating islands — clouds of meringue poached in vanilla milk, then set afloat on the custard made from that same milk. Poaching below a simmer keeps the meringues tender rather than rubbery.
Orange Cake
A Bulgarian winter loaf for the citrus season — zest rubbed into the sugar, fresh juice in an oil batter, and a hot orange syrup poured over the cake straight from the oven so the crumb stays moist and fragrant for days.
Şekerpare
Soft Turkish semolina cookies, each pressed with an almond, baked golden and soaked in lemon syrup until tender right through — a sweet for Turkish holiday tables. Cold syrup poured over hot cookies is what lets them drink it without breaking.
Walnut Cake
A Bulgarian pastry-shop classic — three walnut sponge layers soaked in vanilla syrup and filled with a caramel custard buttercream, finished with ground walnuts and walnut halves. Folding the nuts in gently keeps the sponge from collapsing.
Künefe
The hot cheese pastry of Hatay in southern Turkey — buttered shredded kadaif pastry pressed around a layer of mild melting cheese, cooked in a small pan until crisp, drenched in cold syrup and eaten at once, while the cheese still stretches.
Kozinak (Seed and Nut Brittle)
The Bulgarian brittle of sunflower seeds, sesame and walnuts bound in honey caramel, sold in bars at every corner shop and easy to make at home. Toasting each kind separately, and working fast once the caramel is ready, is all it takes.
Syrniki
Russian and Ukrainian curd-cheese pancakes — thick little rounds of dry curd cheese bound with an egg and a little flour, fried golden in butter and served with sour cream and jam. The drier the cheese, the less flour and the more tender the syrniki.
Roasted Red Pepper Soup
An autumn soup of red peppers roasted until blistered, peeled and blended with roasted tomato, onion and garlic — the charring gives it a sweet, smoky depth, and crumbled white cheese on top adds salt.
Dulce de Leche
The milk caramel of Argentina and Uruguay — milk and sugar simmered for over two hours with a pinch of bicarbonate of soda until reduced to a thick, deep-amber spread for alfajores, pancakes and ice cream.
Lemon Curd
The British teatime spread — lemon juice and zest cooked gently with sugar, eggs and butter into a thick, glossy curd for scones, tarts and pavlova, sharp enough to cut through cream.
Cheese Soufflé
The French soufflé au fromage — a thick béchamel enriched with egg yolks and Gruyère, lightened with stiffly beaten whites and baked until it rises tall above the dish, crusted outside and creamy within.
Gratin Dauphinois
The potato gratin of the Dauphiné in the French Alps — thin slices of potato baked slowly in garlic-scented cream and milk, with no cheese at all, until tender, golden and firm enough to cut.