The Best, Hipest, Tastiest Vegan Cookbook I've tried

books:


	• Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Terry Hope Romero, ... Da Capo Press, 2007 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 178 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Good ideas, but poorly edited

I checked this book out of the library after seeing so many rave reviews on Amazon. At first, I was really excited to get started on the recipes. The table of contents listed some great flavor combinations and the writing is quirky and descriptive. But, I found errors in all 4 of the recipes that I have tried so far. This book should have been edited more thoroughly. Errors include:

1) Leaving out listed ingredients (OK, sooo when am I supposed to add the broth? Mustard Sauce)
2) Wasteful quantities of ingredients that were just thrown away (Chili Cornmeal-Crusted Tofu called for dipping tofu in mixture of 2 Tbsp cornstarch and 1 cup soy milk on you only really use 1/4 cup!)
3) Totally wrong cooking times. (On weekdays, when a recipe says it will take 20 minutes, it is frustrating when the prep is 20 and the baking time is another 20 minutes - Samosa Stuffed Baked Potatoes and Chickpea Cutlets).

The best recipe so far has been the Samosa Stuffed Bake Potatoes. I have not tried any of the baked goods or desserts. And I will try another few recipes before returning the book. But overall, I thought it was a pretty big disappointment.

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The Best, Hipest, Tastiest Vegan Cookbook I've tried

I have a lot of vegan cookbooks. Including Vegan with a Vengeance, which I thought was my favorite. That is until I bought Veganomicon.

This is the best cookbook I've ever had. I use it for everything from a simple quick dinner for my family, or what to make for my omnivore friends and parties.

If you only buy one vegan cookbook, this should be it!

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Wonderfully accessible with delicious recipes

This cookbook rocks. After digging through so many preachy vegan cookbooks overladen with stockmaking and tofu pressing (it's in here, too, but somehow not as oppressive) and impossible-to-find, insanely expensive ingredients, I'd nearly given up on finding a good, healthy, easy cookbook (I'm not 100% vegan, though this was a plus).

The writers' tone is fresh and funny, the food is easy to prepare, and they've even tagged supermarket friendly recipes for those of us who don't feel like making that extra trip to the health store just to make lunch. The pictures are great (too bad they're crammed in the middle, but that just keeps them from getting splattered, I suppose) and the recipes I've tried even look like the pics--no small feat. My one eensy quibble is that ingredients occasionally get lost--for example, in the pineapple-cashew-quinoa stirfry, you roast 4 oz. of raw cashews, remove them from the pan, and never hear of them again. Granted, it's not rocket science--the cashews have to go back into the mix sometime, so I just threw them back in again at the end--heavenly. The food is incredibly flavorful, refreshingly non-fussy, and the section at the beginning on how to cook vegetables, grains, and beans is a godsend for the memory challenged like yours truly.

The writers mention that their goal for most of the recipes is to create dishes that you can make again and again and won't need the cookbook for after making the dish two or three times. They've done it. I can imagine easily improvising some version of a lot of the dishes in there after a time or two of following the recipe, and substitutions are often recommended--nothing rigid about it, yet you know it'll come out tasting good.

While a little tighter editing would have been nice, it's the first vegan cookbook that I've actually used and enjoyed. The pages were splattered within two days of its purchase, and even my carnivorous bf likes everything we've tried. Two huge thumbs up!

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Great so far!

I became a vegan this January...think of it as a new year resolution! I wasn't sure where to start since everything I eat had some sort of dairy product in it, including chocolates. I'm not a huge cook and have never owned a cookbook before. I am one of the people who uses oven for storing pots and pans I never use. When I first opened the book, I thought it wasn't for me. Then just few days ago, I made my first dessert out of the book...a cupcake. It was surprisingly easy and I can't stop having those cupcakes. Then I tried another appetizer which also turned out to be amazing. Overall, this book might seem a bit overwhelming to those who don't cook, but if you're a vegan, you've got to have this book. And if you're not, you should definitely try it!!

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Inspirational and Alchemical

I am not currently vegan, but was looking for a cookbook that would focus on natural and vegetarian foods without relying on dairy and eggs the way many vegetarian cookbooks do. I picked this book up at my local library, hoping especially to find some recipes that would provide alternatives to commercially/industrially produced vegetarian convenience foods.

Out of all the cookbooks I've ever thumbed through, this is the one that had me running to the kitchen the quickest to try out recipes. I instantly whipped up a batch of Almesan (5 minutes!) and Hot-sauce Glazed tempeh from ingredients I already had in my fridge & pantry. Both were very simple to prepare and in each case the results were more than the sum of their parts. (In fact, the hot-sauce tempeh was the best tempeh I've ever eaten.)

I agree that the book could benefit from another pass by an editor. Some of the instructions are not as clearly laid out as they could be, and another reader pointed out that some ingredient lists seem incomplete. However, I have not had difficulty understanding the recipes as a result.

I've flagged so many more recipes to try that I will be buying my own copy. Soon!

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, page 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

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