5 Things We Learned From Mamrie Hart's "All I Think About Is Food"

Welcome back to Cookbook Club! Every month or so we feature a new-to-us book we love. (Are you following our HexClad recipes Insta? Find links to new book picks there.) We've traveled to Africa and India. Now, we're focused on droolworthy recipes that put plants front and center.

If you’ve ever felt that laughter was an underappreciated ingredient in cookbooks, then New York Times bestselling author, comedian and co-host of the popular podcast "This Might Get Weird" Mamrie Hart’s All I Think About Is Food: A Vegetarian Cookbook That'll Keep the Party Going is the book for you. Oh, and did we mention that all of the recipes just happen to be vegetarian?

While all of her dishes may be meat-free, Mamrie stresses, they're far from flavor-free. These are favorites she’s honed over years of hosting dinner parties for omnivorous friends. The result? Inventive dishes like "That Butternut Be Bone Marrow" Onion Dip that you can feel confident serving to anyone, whether they’re strangers to vegetables or avoid meat like the plague.

1. You don’t need fake meat to enjoy vegetarian food

Mamrie isn’t against fake meat—far from it—but feels that if you’re going to cook a meat substitute, there’s not much need for a recipe. However, turning hearts of palm into fried calamari-like rings or celery roots into a fried chicken taste-alike requires a bit of know-how.

Her guiding principle when reaching for a plant-based alternative to meat? “I’m a texture girlie,” she says. In other words, think not just about how you want the end product to taste, but also for how it to feel: crunchy, chewy or charred, for example.

All those things are great in meat’s stead. Ultimately, however, her reason for making a book full of recipes without fake meat is key to the book’s inspiration—dinner parties.

“I love having my friends come over,” she says, “but I don’t really have any vegetarian friends. And while they’d be down to give fake meat a shot, I know they’re comparing it to the real thing. So, I started cooking in a way that was vegetable-heavy instead of trying to do the swap. There’s an aversion to some of those things.”

2. Take inspiration from childhood classics

Mamrie’s book will appeal to the kid in all of us. The food is sumptuous and the colors, bold. This throughline carries into her cooking. There’s a recipe for Drunken O’s, a grown-up take on the canned pasta staple, as well as a delicious white-chocolate pretzel rendition of candy cigarettes.

“My whole vibe with cooking is lowbrow and fun,” she says. “Do I want to open a can of SpaghettiOs? No, but I do want the nostalgia of it.” 

3. Got leftovers? Make a quiche

If you’ve ever made one great quiche, then here’s a secret: You don’t really need another recipe. Mamrie gets this, hence her recipe for Pastiche Quiche. The idea is to make a delicious base and fold in your go-to leftovers. (Repurposing leftovers is a raison d’être for Mamrie, who finds facing a reheated plate of the same-old depressing.)

“I can’t stay interested in something the next day unless it’s a cold slice of pizza,” she says. But she did love reworking leftovers the day after Thanksgiving, when a friend suggested adding the leftovers to a quiche. Thus, the Pastiche Quiche was born. Use it as a template for all your leftovers, whether that’s from Mamrie’s book or recipes like Steamed Indian-Spiced Potatoes, Baked Greek Feta or Warm Grilled Zucchini, Feta, & Basil Salad.

4. Individual tahdigs = peaceful dinner parties

Mamrie admits that she could come to blows battling for the crispy bits of a classic tahdig. To maintain her friendships (and maximize her happiness), she reworked the Persian rice dish in a muffin tin so that it makes individual servings.

“A full tahdig is such a showstopper, but if you get distracted and it burns, you’ve put all that work in for nothing,” she says. Mamrie’s updated version offers more flexibility. If one burns in an uneven oven, no stress, because you’ve got plenty more to serve.

5. Vegetarian food is decadent and dinner party –worthy

If there’s one thing Mamrie wants people to take away from her book, it’s that meat-free food is fun.

“I feel like vegetarian food is so often pushed out and relegated to a side dish, and we need to embrace it as the whole shebang. And as more people are becoming veggie-curious, it needs to feel like it isn’t a punishment," she says. "So many cookbooks’ angles with vegetables is ‘How do you hide them?’ I want to be like, 'How do you flaunt them?' and make it feel like more of a party and less of a sentence."

To that end, Mamrie included cocktail pairings in every chapter of the book. Each of the dinner party-themed sections of the book is stocked with delicious cocktails. “Whether you partake or you don’t, it’s a fun option to have.”

Stock up on delicious produce, grab a copy of All I Think About Is Food and make Mamrie's umami-rich onion dip.

*Quotes have been edited and condensed for clarity