Whether or not you identify as vegan, there are plenty of reasons to explore plant-based cooking. Cuisines around the world have put plants at the center of daily meals for millennia, transforming humble vegetables with flavor-packed ingredients like miso, tahini, coconut milk, and more. And, as Washington Post editor and author Joe Yonan argues in his new book, Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking: Vegan Recipes, Tips, and Techniques, vegan cooking doesn’t leave fun off the table, either. Your favorite comfort foods can be made just as good—if not better—without relying on animal products. Yonan’s book delivers more than 300 recipes to prove his point: that veganism isn’t just a diet but a genuine cuisine, one that puts delicious vegetables cooked with tremendous creativity at the center of every plate. Read on for Yonan’s tips for stocking a global-inspired vegan pantry, crafting satisfying meatless mains, and letting plant-based cooking just be, well, fun.

Jessica Carbone: There have been lots of reasons to go plant-based throughout history—from philosophical and ethical stances to health and environmental concerns. What do you think are the motivations for plant-based eating today?

Joe Yonan: The trinity of motivations are primarily about health, environment, and animal welfare, and while animal welfare is very important, it’s the first two that have really grown in our current environment, especially in relation to climate change. People are finally realizing that what they eat can have an environmental effect, and that they don’t have to be all-or-nothing about it—I call myself about 90 percent vegan now. Even making small shifts can be helpful in the collective sense. Similarly, the one piece of dietary advice that’s common across all studies is to eat a lot of vegetables and a variety of vegetables. And then there’s the marketplace response, which has given people many more plant-based options than we used to have. Maybe the number of people who say that they’re vegan or vegetarian hasn’t really changed, but the number of people who say they’re eating more vegetables and less meat keeps going up.

Plant-based diets aren’t new to many cultures around the world. How is the global vegan pantry central to this book?

My previous book, Cool Beans, was all about legumes, which have had a huge place in cucina povera, as the Italians call it, for centuries. Then I also came across people like Bryant Terry and Jocelyn Ramirez, who write so wonderfully about colonialism in diets. So when I was thinking about the recipes for this book, I wanted to remind people that this is not some fad. This is integral to the way people have eaten in most parts of the world forever. I’m not anti-progress—I’m a modern cook and I love new things—but when I hear about the evils of certain foods, I think, how does that square with the way that people have eaten healthfully for decades? There are methods for integrating traditional ways of eating with our modern lifestyle that can be really impactful.

Do you have workhorse ingredients that you keep on hand?

I always have to have coconut milk and tahini. I’m a huge tahini fan because it’s thinner than other nut butters and you can drizzle it on things, which adds richness to anything. Miso is also huge for me; it’s like a bouillon paste with that instant depth and umami. The first time I had a really good vegan mac and cheese, the person who made it put miso in it, and it’s a crucial part of the book’s cashew mac and cheese recipe; it also proves you don’t need vegan cheese to accomplish great flavor. I also can’t live without spices—they are the fastest and best ticket to changing a flavor profile to any cuisine in the world. And I honestly don’t think that I could eat a plant-based diet without beans and mushrooms.

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Were there specific comfort foods that you wanted to feature in this book?

I gradually moved toward veganism, so I never stopped in my tracks and said, “From this day forward, I am not going to eat any meat.” If you do that, you start to wonder how you’re going to have a hamburger or grilled cheese because these are things that are familiar and nostalgic. So, at the top of my list was a veggie burger. There’s so much deliciousness in a veggie burger that’s not trying to make you think it’s meat. The book’s burger has discernible vegetables, yet it’s put together in a way that gives you all of that satisfaction. I also leaned a little bit on Italian American foods, like baked stuffed shells. I was really excited to do an eggless pasta and a tomato “gravy.” I often think about things people might have a visceral attachment to because a good vegan recipe can show that they don’t have to give it up.

For a lot of folks, there’s an assumption that meat should be at the center of the plate. Are there vegan main dishes that can shake up this mindset?

I have a whole chapter on mains called “Knife and Fork” that shows you can have vegetables at the center of the plate and really dig into them. When you’re cooking with a plant-based strategy, it can be easy to fall back on bowls, stir-fries—stuff where everything is mixed together—and I love that. But whole roasted vegetables exemplify the center-of-the-table idea, stuff you bring out and carve at the table. There’s a beautiful cauliflower steak with a korma-inspired sauce, and it’s got little toppings and everything on it; there’s a romanesco with romesco sauce and a cider-glazed celery root. As long as everything tastes great and there’s texture and it’s got cool flavors, it can be satisfying.

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At the start of your dessert chapter, you state that “plant-based cooking is not health food.” Why did you include that disclaimer?

I realize that one of the pillars of switching to plant-based cooking is health, but plant-based cooking is not a cuisine of subtraction or asceticism—it can be fun and it can be delicious. There are many books that explain how to make desserts with all-natural sweeteners or whole grains, all of which are great. But in this book, you’re figuring out how to make plant-based cooking delicious. For example, I love the sweet potato crème brûlée because it shows that even a classic dessert can so easily take to plant-based treatment. And my feeling is that, if you’re cooking more plant-based dishes, the healthy side of things will come anyway.

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What attitude should people adopt to make the most of the book?

I want them to feel excited, to say, “This is going to be fun.” If this is very new to them, I want them to have a sense of, “I can’t wait to see where this is going to lead me.” And this is probably true of any cookbook author, but I want them to think they can jump into this and depend on the instructions and headnotes; they’re not flying without a net. When Judith Jones came up with the title for Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, she thought the most important part of the title was the “-ing”—I love that so much. I’m leaning really hard on the -ing because this is an active process; you never stop learning. I want to hold up plant-based cooking as something that’s as worthy of an attempt at mastery as French, Italian, or Spanish cooking, and I want people to feel engaged in the process, to feel that this is something they can do and want to do.