I am no more qualified to review cookbooks than I am to review restaurants. If it counts for anything, I've had a pretty impressive collection of cookbooks at times over the years (not so much anymore as that is what the internet is for) and made good use of them. These days I happen to think that publicizing the fact that there are vegan cookbooks and vegan eats out there and available is important.
Nishi Vora's YouTube channel is called, Rainbow Plant Life. We have been watching it for a while and often try her recipes, sometimes posting the results on Instagram. Her enthusiasm for plant-based eating and vegan living is infectious. She is creative and efficient in her use of make ahead sauces and other components for weekly planning and we employ some of her shortcuts regularly. We enjoy that she is humorous and humble enough to post outtakes. So when she announced that she was working on a cookbook (not her first), I decided to preorder it. It's a beautiful book with photographs that are far more impressive than mine and if it was to sit on your coffee table and do nothing more. It would be worth having.
When I picked up the book, the first thing I did was look for recipes to make. Of course I was drawn to the tastiest looking pictures but I also looked for easy recipes, being a little on the lazy side. Big Vegan Flavour is inclined towards more involved preparations. Not necessarily complicated techniques but more ingredients and the use of building block sauce and spice recipes and so on. At first it annoyed me somewhat but when I tackled the recipes, they turned out to be well worth it. The Cheesy Herb Bread Pudding with Caramelized Leeks (photo above) is an example of a simpler recipe that came with amazing results. Not all the recipes are complicated, It was only my first impression.
I made a couple of desserts including the Caramelized Stone Fruit Crisp with Tahini Custard. It was delicious and reminded me of one of my favourite childhood treats but with the brilliant tahini custard twist. Caramelized ingredients in both of these photos notwithstanding, texture is a feature of many of the recipes that the author pays attention to.
For example, I would never have imagined the word crispy applying to beans and pulses but the Crispy Indian-ish Lentils with Rice and Yogurt (photo above) had a wonderful unexpected texture to go with familiar-ish flavours.
There are 4 "odes" in the cookbook referencing important and useful vegan ingredients for which the author has special respect or even a childhood connection. One of these odes is to tempeh, a fermented soy product that was being used in Indonesian cuisine long before it was cool to be vegan (Oh. It is cool!). The Sweet and Sour Tempeh Stir-Fry (photo above) is one of the results of special attention to a wonderful ingredient that we should all use more often! The other odes are to tofu, lentils and mushrooms.
Further, the book is divided into 3 parts: Mastering Vegan Cooking, The Building Block Recipes and Wow-Worthy Meals. Each of those parts is divided into a total of 13 chapters. Some of those chapters focus on a technique, an ingredient or a meal. The Customizable Grain Salad with Garlicky Spiced Oil & Fresh Herbs (photo above) is an example from Chapter 7, The Grains. In this chapter not only do we get familiar with some grains that we may rarely have used but use the familiar grains in creative ways. I used faro in the salad above but you can easily switch out for any other grain. Each recipe has handy notes about the ingredients, variations, do ahead steps and so on. Even as I write this, I realize how this cookbook is useful for anyone from new to experienced vegan cook or anyone else who wants to expand their repertoire with delicious, healthy, animal and earth friendly recipes.
You will not find recipes here using the commercially available faux meats. I don't personally have anything against Beyond and Impossible products (for example) and I don't know if the author does either but we don't really need recipes for those things. The substantial recipes you will find here make use of the whole foods that when prepared creatively such as My Favourite Dal Tadka (photo above) a wonderful lentil dish, will leave you satisfied and missing nothing!
At this point, I have barely scratched the surface and i have kind of bounced around in the book as opposed to reading it in an orderly fashion which is what I would recommend to a serious home cook. The 3 parts are organized in such a ways as to provide the basic knowledge for the following parts. I know its too late for Christmas but if you got a book store gift card, you could do worse than add this to your collection.
No comments:
Post a Comment