Essential Cookbooks

If you came over to my house, and walked into my kitchen, you would see a shelf by the stove overcrowded with cookbooks. The top of the fridge is also an overcrowded home to cookbooks. And then there’s the box in the office of cookbooks I need to get rid of. Not all the cookbooks are vegan, but you can bet your ass they all get veganized. Some I use all the time, some I use as reference points, and some I use on occasion and mostly serve as total food porn. I thought today I would share some of my staples, and I promise not to include ALL the books in my collection, as the point of this post is not to lull you to sleep.

Vegan Brunch: I used to only have friends over for dinner parties, but lately I’ve been feeling the desire to start having friends over for Sunday brunches. Isa’s book makes me want to NOT wake up with a hangover reminiscent of my college days just so I can make Chesapeake Tempeh Cakes, Potato Spinach Squares and Cherry Sage Soysages.

La Dolce Vegan: when I need to know how to make mock meats, this is where I turn. It’s got a ton of other amazing foods, like vegan mac and cheese, and fun craft projects, but mostly it’s my faux meat bible.

Soy Not Oi: Give Big Brother the finger and go vegan. Long before vegan was chic, the Hippycore Krew put out a gem of a cookzine with “over 100 recipes designed to destroy the government.” You won’ find Daiya Shreds or Gardien Steak Strips in here, my friends, but what you will find is a collective of recipes, most of them of the “throw veggies and spices in a pot, cook, and bring with you to a basement show” variety. Almost every recipe has a suggested soundtrack, and if you can’t get behind a punk-wok stir-fry, well, you can just bugger-off.

Veganomicon: I firmly believe Veganomicon is the single most essential cookbook for anyone who eats or cooks vegan. It’s like the Joy or Cooking, but for vegans. And not stupidly complicated. Inside the covers lies recipes for croquettes, samosa, sammies, mix ‘n’ match sides, hot and sour soup, French lentil soup, southwestern corn pudding, chile verde, asparagus risotto, and a whole section for sauces and fake cheeze, breads, and desserts. I pity the fool that doesn’t have this book.

The Conscious Cook: Not only does Chef Tal offer up an amazing array of French and Asian inspired dishes like “Gardien ‘Chicken’ scaloppini with shitake sake sauce, braised pea shoots and crispy udon noodle cakes,” he includes sections on his favorite herbs, sea vegetables, and citrus fruits (to name a few), which I appreciate, and he has a whole section on cashew cream. The whole book is food porn at it’s best.

Book Review: A Busy Cook’s Guide to Spices

Book Review: A Busy Cook’s Guide to Spices

Like it goes with the rest of my life, I’m one of the last to hop on the bandwagon for Vegan Month of Food. But I guess what matters is that I made the blogroll deadline and am now fully committed to kicking out vegan food blogs left and right this month. So, dear friends, if I don’t answer your emails or phone calls, it’s because I’m up to my eyeballs in produce, spices, and baking. This also serves as an invitation for Seattle friends to just stop by and have a meal, or just pick up to-go containers of food.

But before the baking and cooking commences, I wanted to share with you a gem of a book I picked up the other day at Market Spice Tea in the Pike Place Market. This is not a vegan cookbook. Hell, it’s not even really a cookbook. It’s a total resource of amazing ideas and flavour for us “home cooks” who never, and will never, go to cooking school.

Wondering what other herbs complement basil? Just flip to page 22. Or how about the folklore of chervil? Take a gander at page 37. Never even heard of chervil? Well, that’s ok; you’d just learn that its flavour is a “mild licorice with a peppery aftertaste.” And apparently it goes well with leeks. Ever wonder what spices are in “mulling spices”? That’s answered as well.

But that’s not even the half of it. This book is like a little bible of flavour. The first section of the book contains “Flavourings and how they are used,” which includes the spice name, a description of taste, when it should be added, complimenting spices, and history and origin. As well as a guide to herbs, it also includes the same for wine and beer, beans, and nuts.

The second section contains “Foods and flavorings that go with them.” Now, there is flesh listed in here, but it doesn’t take a great leap to translate the guide to vegan options. Wondering what you could put in your scrambled tofu to spruce it up a bit? Check out the eggs section. Have a bag of Gardien steak strips? Turn to the “beef” page and see what spices would go well to make a faux beef stew. See where I’m going with this? Anyways, there’s a ton of other ingredients in this section, the majority of them vegetables, running from apples to zucchini, and there's even some recipes.

Other fun resources include a guide to the four tastes, measurement equivalents, a pasta variety chart, a mini guide to mushrooms, and a spice substitution list. Out of turmeric and to lazy to run to the store? Try using ginger instead. No, it’s not a cookbook, but it’s an amazing base from which to build your own recipes. Plus, the pages smell like the original cinnamon-orange tea.* Whether you’re a foodie or a food whore, you’d do well to have A Busy Cook’s Guide to Spices, by Linda Murdock, in your collection.

* Only true if you buy it from a tea shop where the smell of orange-cinnamon has permeated every object.