The Savory Way has a Middle Eastern influence. Where did that come from?
When I was in Arizona, I met someone who had been living in Turkey and she cooked dishes for me. I loved those flavors so much, those of all of the Middle East really: yogurt and dill and cumin and things that sizzle, and the use of legumes. The cuisines of the eastern Mediterranean really have a lot of interesting flavors and textures. Also a Lebanese man opened up a market and restaurant in my town, and I was able to go eat Lebanese food all the time. What inspired your book Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone? I was teaching a weeklong class in vegetarian cooking at the Esalen Institute in California, a really basic class—bread, salad dressing, pasta, gratins. As I was driving home, I was thinking, it’s really too bad there is no Joy of Cooking for vegetarians. At that time, if you were interested in, say, soy, you had to make do with a pamphlet in the health-food store. The title of the book was intended to convey that this is not a political tract, just a book about good food anyone c
