Cooking with the Right Side of Your Brain

With its heavy reliance on natural foods specialty items, such as shoyu, miso and hijiki, Chelf's collection seems a throwback to vegetarian cookbooks of the early '70s. She herself appears to have an inkling of this; when checking her notes for this volume, she realized that ``there were practically no `normal' recipes in the book. . . .'' Only a very starry-eyed vegetarian will believe that vegetable broth, tamari and miso constitute a convincing substitute for beef stock in French onion soup. Pasta, with its numerous meatless possibilities, merits just a few entries. There is an interesting fettucini with spinach and ricotta, but the sole lasagna recipe is prepared with mashed tofu and textured vegetable protein. The author even introduces her sandwich of tofu, tahini and miso with the plaintive comment that ``this sandwich tastes better than it sounds''--cold comfort to a hungry reader. One plus: the glossary of ingredients provided by Chelf, a cooking instructor and natural foods store operator, offers an intriguing, succinct introduction to uncommon items. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)