I'm not a vegetarian but you knew that. I have never really been comfortable with any sort of constraint (especially culinarily). Still we eat vegetarian at 3 or 4 nights a week, not necessarily by design or any sort of mandate. It just works out that way.

Partly because I am in love with the beauty of vegetables. Fresh-fare, grown impeccably and served at its peak of perfection is culinary magic to my way of thinking. The colors and the textures of so many vegetables are positively inspiring. Let's face it. Dead animals can enliven any meal, but vegetables require an artistic eye, and a more nuanced sensibility. So, when cooking on a nightly basis, the meals that come out of my kitchen are often vegetarian. Unless you count Asian Fish Sauce. I put Asian Fish Sauce in everything.

My point is– I may dabble unconsciously in vegetarian styles of cooking, but there are others who embrace it passionately and creatively. Michael Natkin is one such cook. His new book, named after his blog Herbivoracious, shows off his style of flavor-packed cooking; pulling together gutsy flavors and ingredients from around the world. Asian tastes make plenty of appearances as you might expect. After all, there are 15 recipes calling for tofu in this book. But I see Middle-Eastern influences in his eggplant sandwich, a lot of naturally meatless Indian preparations, as well as vegetarian takes on things like the internationally popular lasagna (his has portobellos and summer squash).

But these globally-inspired recipes are a far cry from the usual-suspects. I'll be honest, recipes that merely swap lentils for meat  are never as good as the original (lentil loaf with ketchup? No thank you). These type of sad-faced recipes are the bane of many a vegetarian cookbook, and the reason I could never be a vegetarian.