(Steven M. Herppich photo)

        Behold, the power of vegetarian friends.

        For a recent dinner party, I wanted to serve hearty and warming stews. Problem was, four of my eight guests were vegetarians. So of course, I was skeptical that I could make a decent stew without meat. Where would the flavor come from?

        But after a little cookbook browsing, I decided to try something aptly named Winter Vegetable Stew from Deborah Madison's seminal The Greens Cookbook (Broadway; $29.95). Based on a beefy-looking wild mushroom stock, the stew called for a slew of root vegetables — carrots, parsnips and celery root, as well as Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and mushrooms.

        Although you might think making vegetable stew would be as easy as throwing everything into a pot (after all, you don't have to cut and brown beef), this recipe did require effort. Some of the vegetables were blanched briefly before stewing, others were first browned in butter and oil. Ms. Madison's directions also called for making a sauce from sauteed onions, dried herbs and a splash of red wine.

        The results were well worth my labors. The Winter Stew turned out as fragrant and flavorful as any pot roast, benefiting from toasted garlic, spicy parsnips, fresh thyme and tarragon. And the stew's textures were an intriguing melange of tender Brussels sprouts, barely crisp carrots and hunks of white mushrooms still bearing rich, butter-seared edges.

        The vegetable stew drew raves from meat lovers and vegetarians alike — more praise than the long-cooked Provencal stew I served at the same meal, made with three kinds of beef, two bottles of red wine and a heavy dash of cognac.

        Without the dietary preferences of my darned principled veg friends, I might never have been prodded to attempt such an unconventional stew. And without Deborah Madison's recipe, I wouldn't have known where to start.

Meat eater, too
       

        It wouldn't be a stretch to describe Ms. Madison as the mother of American vegetarian cuisine. She was the founding chef of Greens Restaurant in San Francisco in 1979, and along with The Greens Cookbook, has won awards for The Savory Way (Bantam; $20) and Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (Broadway; $40). Her next book, Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers Markets, will be published in June.

        She is not a vegetarian, and even famous among friends for her holiday boeuf bourguignonne,but Ms. Madison loves the flavors of all-vegetable stews.

        “I'm more of a stew person than a stir-fry person,” she says over the phone from her home in Santa Fe, N.M.

        Then she surprises me by claiming vegetable stews don't have to be as labor-intensive as the one I made..

        Another shocker: “A good stock is important to making a good stew — and it isn't.”

        If you have a good homemade vegetable stock, your stew will probably taste better, she says. But if you don't have stock, use water. By the time the vegetables simmer together, you will have created stock in the stew pot.

        As far as those hoops I jumped through for her stew, blanching the cauliflower and Brussels sprouts first, for instance, Ms. Madison says you can just start cooking more firm vegetables first, then add softer ones, such as mushrooms, to the pot later in the cooking.

Flavor layers
       

        The key to making the best vegetable stews, she says, is to create a “layer of flavors,” and this requires a little effort. Caramelizing vegetables in a hot pan or in an oven brings out their sweetness and intensifies flavor. That's the first step.

        “After browning onions,” she says, “I'll add more olive oil and a little tomato paste. That adds a layer of flavor. Then, I'll deglaze the pan with red wine for another layer of flavor.”

        Adding rehydrated dried mushrooms and their soaking liquid to stews also will boost flavor, Ms. Madison says. Or a shot of dark mushroom soy sauce.

        Other vegetable stew tips: Flesh out the stew with fat. Brown onions and other vegetables in good butter and/or olive oil. And don't cook vegetables until they're mushy. The stew will taste better if there is a slight bite to the carrots and cauliflower.

        Above all, don't make something this simple and satisfying an overwhelming project.

        “The nice thing about vegetable stews is you don't have to have everything chopped and ready to cook at once,” Ms. Madison says. “You can chop and add as you go.”

        Another thing to remember: You don't have to wait until vegetarians come to dinner to make vegetable stew.

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