cookbook

Appetite for Reduction: 125 Fast and Filling Low-Fat Vegan Recipes

mandy — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

My library copy of Vegan with a Vengeance shouldn’t have been returned. Not in the state it was in after it lived in my kitchen for five renewed status cycles (the maximum number I was allowed before I had to return it to my local library). The book shouldn’t have been returned because it smelled like food. A cookbook, naturally, absorbs the effort of its teachings: oils and buttered thumb prints, dried arrow root smudges, and one small berry stain on two of the pages when I tried to turn them with fruit juice-stained fingers. Luckily, I don’t have to return Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s newest book, Appetite for Reduction, which is doomed to the same fate as its predecessor: lovingly used with pages that are turned with excitement, torn at its edges and bearing of all kinds of quirky marks, compliments of the daring cook.

Moskowitz discloses her personal health reasons that resulted in her decision to find more recipes that are lighter in caloric intake. She also stresses her reluctance to contribute to the war on bigger bodied women. So what does Moskowitz do? She writes a cookbook for vegan stomachs searching lowfat, delicious recipes. For those in the vegan community who are also health conscious, Moskowitz has delivered the goods on a plate too irresistible to deny.

Isa Chandra Moskowitz is the best friend we’re all looking for: she writes in a way we understand, a language that is easily understood and humorous. She is also the cook we want for our healthy lives and families. She gets it. She gets that we don’t want to give up taste and satisfaction for healthy living. With this book, she dismantles the notion that vegan eating and cooking is not either extreme of the rumor spectrum. Veganhood is not bland rabbit food, nor is it substituting large amount of full fat in place of flavor.

From funky hummus creative ideas to “OMG Oven-Baked Onion Rings,” from sides to satisfying full entrée ideas, Moskowitz turns your vegan kitchen upside down, shakes out the fat, and replaces it with novel and tasty ideas to keep your mind interested and your tongue happy you tried something new. For this, I raise my spatula to Moskowitz with a need and heartfelt thank you. Vegan or omnivore, you will find something to rave about and savor in Appetite for Reduction.

Written by: Lisa Factora-Borchers, April 15th 2011

Veganize This!: From Surf & Turf to Ice-Cream Pie--200 Animal-Free Recipes for People Who Love to Eat

mandy — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Jenn Shagrin

Da Capo

One of the struggles faced by many vegetarians, vegans, or any other person who has a restricted diet is that you can no longer eat the “comfort foods” you enjoyed earlier in your life. One of my favorite foods to eat when I was a child was beef stroganoff. I can still taste it when I think about the flavors, aromas, and even its delightfully sloppy appearance. Alas, I no longer eat red meat, so beef stroganoff is not a part of my culinary repertoire. And although I’ve made the low-rent version with mushrooms and cream sauce, the flavors and aromas that went along with this venture are just not as memorable.

Veganize This! author Jenn Shagrin gets this quandary, and thoroughly addresses it in her cookbook. A self-described “lazy vegan” who grew up enjoying Italian and Chinese food in a Jewish home in Youngstown, Ohio, Shagrin respects the importance that certain rich, classic recipes can hold in our lives. She succinctly describes the dilemma of eating according to your ethical perspective, while creating food that not only tastes amazing but appeases your nostalgic side as well. The goal of her compilation is to help people recreate recipes that were originally centered around meat, in a stellar vegan style.

Despite her self-description, Shagrin's recipes are anything but lazy. She has created concoctions that are ambitious, interesting, and sometimes a bit terrifying. In the mood for meat and potatoes? Try dijonaise-crusted "beef" tenderloin medallions with vegan béarnaise sauce over roasted eggplant and garlic smashed potatoes. Anyone up for chicken wings? Bourbon buffalo mole "chicken" wings with vegan bleu cheese-avocado oil aioli are sure to please.

The titles of the recipes aren't the only things that are long; the ingredients lists are extensive as well. No one ever said creating carnivorous dishes in a meatless fashion would be easy. However, due to time constraints and a lack of confidence, I made the vegan bacon as my test recipe.

Aside from having to purchase a few items I don’t keep stocked in my kitchen, such as liquid smoke and mirin, I possessed the vegan staples needed to make the bacon, such as soy sauce, tofu, and onion powder. After a few hours of marinating in the fridge, and then some baking in the oven, my "bacon" strips were done! Anyone who is a former omnivore knows that there is nothing under the sun that can rival real bacon; however, this version was meatier and more substantive than the frozen kind you can get at the grocery store, and infinitely cheaper to boot.

Most of the recipes in Veganize This! require ample time and preparation, and may require ingredients that are not at your local grocery. But I wholeheartedly recommend this book as a staple for anyone who promotes environmental, social, or animal welfare in their diet. Want to enjoy your Grandma’s best recipe, but you no longer eat beef? Veganize This! ensures you will not be disappointed.

Written by: Rachel Muzika Scheib, April 4th 2011

Skinny Bitch Ultimate Everyday Cookbook: Crazy Delicious Recipes That are Good to the Earth and Great for Your Bod

beth — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Kim Barnouin

Running Press

Assuming you’ve never heard of Skinny Bitch and its burgeoning franchise, here’s a quick primer. A diet book, marketed as a tough love, no-nonsense takedown of women who whine about their diets and think there is nothing they can do to change their bodies, ambushes its readers with a surprise crash course on the evils of eating animal products, meant to shock women into choosing a vegan diet.

Now, original co-author Kim Barnouin presents Skinny Bitch Ultimate Everyday Cookbook: Crazy Delicious Recipes That are Good to the Earth and Great for Your Bod. On the cover, awash in bright, earthy colors, the author leans happily over a huge spread of actual food, smiling, positively un-bitchy, and ready to dig in with us. In short, nothing resembling the original franchise, to its benefit. I’m sure the brand drives sales and creates buzz but this cookbook seemed a welcome departure from the cold-hearted bullying and fat-shaming of the first. Why persist with a title that doesn’t seem to reflect the values of the book? I get it, though—Smart and Sassy Person Who Cares About Where Her Food Comes From and What Goes in Her Body Who is Also Vegan and Might be Thin Because of These Factors just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Let’s get to the good stuff, the fake meat and organic sweet potatoes! I’ll be the first to declare cooking vegan to be tricky. Not hard, and certainly not impossible, but for the average person in the average town with the average grocery store and average amount of free time… tricky. Especially for someone just getting her sea legs on the Good Ship Vegan, clarity of instruction, organization, helpful tips, and accessible ingredients are key. Pretty pictures help, too. Many recipes were illustrated with gorgeous full-page color photos, visually enticing and definitely influential in my test kitchen menu planning process. Most of the ingredients were fairly easy to locate at my neighborhood grocery store, but for the wilier ingredient outlaws, dropping extra dough at Whole Foods was the only option.

A rundown of the recipes we chose to make reveals mixed results. The Pasta, Navy Bean, and Spinach Soup was truly nourishing and delicious and I hope someone makes it for me the next time I’m sick in bed. On the flip side, the Cream of Cauliflower Soup was watery and lacking flavor, and as a meal, left me running to the cupboard for a snack an hour later. Following the instructions to the letter on the Masoor Daal (Split Red Lentils) produced a solid block of dried out lentils at the bottom of the pan, but so deliciously spiced was the block that we carved out chunks to eat with Cholay and Aaloo (Chickpeas and Potatoes). The Curried Chickpea cakes were the hands-down favorite for flavor, texture, and surprising ease of assembly. The Lentil Tacos with Fresh Salsa were a bland let-down (who knew tacos could taste bad?), but the Lentil Seitan Sloppy Joes were a yummy hit, a breeze to put together, and a fun, meatless take on a childhood favorite. Finally came the “big one,” my personal Moby Dick, the Asian Macaroni and Cheese, which took over an hour to prepare before it even hit the oven, and left us with anticlimactic plates of white on white cauliflower, tofu, and elbow macaroni, tepidly “Asian”-flavor, and markedly lacking “cheesiness.”

That was our recipe round up, and if you’re reading this then chances are you want to know if you should buy this cookbook. While I’ll be keeping a handful of recipes in rotation, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it with out a boatload of caveats, exceptions, and disclaimers. The recipes on the whole just didn’t yield results that felt worth the time, effort, or cost of extraneous ingredients, particularly those brand names that are suspiciously endorsed throughout the book.

A vegan diet and way of living doesn’t need a gimmick to make it appealing, and it doesn’t need to be dumbed-down, glammed-up, and packaged as an easily digestible weight loss tool. Ultimately, it’s too hard to gauge what the real goal of this cookbook is, and what our goals should be in reading it and eating by it; should we want to be skinny above all, or want to save the environment, or be healthy, or make food we enjoy preparing and eating the most? There are better vegan cookbooks on the market, and there are better weight-loss cookbooks, and I’d love to chat about how to find them and hear your own recommendations. In attempting to keep multiple balls in the air, Skinny Bitch Ultimate Everyday Cookbook spreads itself too thin. It is possible to “have it all,” but you don’t need this cookbook to get there.

Written by: Kelly Moritz, March 2nd 2011

The 30 Minute Vegan's Taste of the East: 150 Asian-Inspired Recipes—from Soba Noodles to Summer Rolls

tina — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Mark Reinfeld, Jennifer Murray

Da Capo Press

The 30 Minute Vegan's Taste of the East is a compilation of recipes from India, Thailand, China, and Japan. There’s an additional section on Asian Fusion, featuring recipes from Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Tibet, and Nepal, as well as little known recipes from Iran and Afghanistan. Basically, this cookbook allows you to make vegan versions of your favorite Asian dishes in less time than it would take a delivery person to arrive.

Trying to obtain a vegan version of a menu item is difficult in most restaurants, especially if you frequented the restaurant in your pre-vegan life. I’ve had a restaurant owner swear that a particular dish could be made meatless, but once the food arrived it was clear that I received the standard dish. As a result, I began looking around for a cookbook that would have vegan versions of what I wanted to order in a restaurant. A lot of the cookbooks I found had the recipes, but both ingredient lists and cooking times were too long to be practical on a daily basis.

This cookbook solves both problems; it provides recipes you want in versions that can be made in thirty minutes or less and the ingredient lists provide item descriptions and any alternate names the items may go by. The book provides substitutions for those who do not have access to fresh ingredients, and a list of resources for those who prefer to shop for ingredients online.

The book is divided into sections by country and recipes are listed in menu order (soup through dessert), making it simple to pick and choose your meal plan. Recipes also include serving suggestions in the form of complementary dishes. All directions are easy to follow and recipe variations are provided to show how each dish can be prepared differently or with different ingredients. Recipes that take longer than thirty minutes are marked with a clock at the top of the page. Pages marked with a heart at the top are recipes for raw food items or items with raw variations.

Sidebars, Chef’s Tips and Tricks, and The Asian Pantry provide preparation tips and shortcuts, along with information on ingredients specific to the recipe’s country of origin. Appendixes include an informative preparation tutorial, a glossary, and a thorough listing of vegan resources for online shopping, education, and related topics of eastern spirituality and culture.

If you gave up a dish when you became vegan and never thought you’d see it again, have a look at this book; you’re likely to find it here. If you don’t see it immediately, read a few recipes in the area and you might find it under a different name. I found my long lost Tom Yum Gai under the name Galangal Lemongrass Soup. Once you find your lost beloved, try a new recipe to go with it. You’ll be glad you did!

Written by: Melissa Ruiz, December 18th 2010

Vegan Baking Classics: Delicious, Easy-to-Make Traditional Favorites

mandy — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Kelly Rudnicki

Surrey Books

Kelly Rudnicki describes herself as a “busy mother of five young children,” the oldest of whom was “diagnosed with life-threatening food allergies to dairy, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, and legumes.” Incorporating material from her blog, Rudnicki’s first book, The Food Allergy Mama’s Baking Book, began as Vegan Baking Classics. Although the title of the book situates it in vegan media culture, I found Rudnicki’s writing style, interests, and recipe descriptions more typical of parenting and food allergy books.

Rudnicki lacks the edgy, almost punk style of some of the best vegan cookbook authors, like Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Terry Hope Romero, or the Sarah Kramer and Tanya Barnard powerhouse duo. Moskowitz and Romero’s Post-Punk Kitchen public access television show and website define the ways in which veganism is a playful way to be an anarchist in the kitchen without hurting anyone. And Moskowitz’s *Vegan with a Vengeance includes an anecdote about feminist potlucks, heightening what I see as a unifying tenant of many cookbooks: a sense that food is part of a larger set of political concomitants.

That is not to disparage Rudnicki. Her desire to feed her son the doughnuts, muffins, cakes, and cookies she remembers from her childhood offers a powerful testament to her mothering. She expresses her own activist interests in the book when she suggests that she wants doctors to find a cure for the allergens that plague her son. Rudnicki is concerned about health, and she offers tips for lowering the fat in baked goods, such as replacing some of the oils with apple sauce.

The recipes in Vegan Baking Classics are just that—classics. They are comfort foods made in a form consumable for vegans, people with food allergies, and anyone who wants to eat a variety of pastries, cookies, cakes, pies, and other delicious sweet treats.

The notes that accompany the recipes tend to be repetitive and, therefore, a little boring. At times, they even make the end result sound unappealing. As someone who eats my fair share of energy bars, I found the description of Rudnicki's Cranberry-Chocolate Drop Cookies, which she says remind her of her “favorite nutrition bars,” a bit off-putting. I have sometimes wished my energy bars tasted more like cookies, but I rarely wish a cookie tasted more like an energy bar.

Overall, Vegan Baking Classics offers a range of delectable and fun recipes that can satisfy a wide range of people whose teeth tend toward the sweet kind. Following Rudnicki’s hints and tips makes baking without dairy, eggs, and common allergens accessible, and every recipe is worth trying… even if her writing isn't as fun to read as the best punk rock vegan cooks out there.

Written by: Emily Bowles, December 12th 2010

Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented

brittany — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Matt Lewis, Renato Poliafito

Stewart, Tabori & Chang

Everything good these days seems to be coming out of Brooklyn, so I wasn’t surprised to find that Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, authors of Baked Explorations, have a tremendously successful bakery in Brooklyn that is garnering national attention—not to mention a whole lot of love for from the food-centric blogosphere.

This is the second book by the duo; their first was aptly titled Baked and named after their bakery. Lewis and Poliafito are becoming known for upping the ante and recreating run-of-the-mill sweet treats; think the usual suspects—brownies, pound cakes, scones—but on steroids. Their latest cookbook is in the same vein but aims to put a clever spin on classic American desserts. During their travels, Lewis and Poliafito were often approached by fans who wanted to share their favorite desserts that have been passed down through generations at “church suppers and small town gatherings.” Many of these were hyper-regional or long thought of as passé or just plain bizarre, like Mississippi Mud pie or Jell-O pretzel salad—a favorite at Mormon gatherings. (I can personally attest to this—don’t ask.)

Thumbing through a baking cookbook, especially one as stylish and hip as Baked Explorations, is equally enticing and discouraging to me. As I’ve said before, I do not enjoy baking, mostly because I’m very bad at it and looking at page after page of perfectly executed desserts only reminds me of how inferior my baking skills are. That being said, Baked Explorations isn’t all towering, perfectly-iced cakes and multi-tiered treats. There are many recipes that not even I could screw up, including a no-bake cookie.

The first thing that caught my eye was the second recipe in the book, intended for breakfast: pumpkin cheddar muffins. The combination sounded a little odd, perhaps even a tad gross, so naturally I was intrigued. This time of year I’m all about simple pumpkin goodies and have been known to churn out countless pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and more than a few loaves of pumpkin bread. I love when sweet and savory collide and these little gems do not disappoint. Since receiving Baked Explorations just one month ago, I’ve made these pumpkin cheddar muffins a total of six times; I’ve eaten them for breakfast, I’ve dipped them into bowls of turkey chili, and sopped up the last bit of soup in my bowl with them. They are dead simple to make and taste just like you think: cheesy and pumpkin-y, but they’re also spiked with a bit of cayenne pepper that hits your throat ever so slightly after each bite. They are divine.

I really wanted to talk about the Nutella scones, which in theory are perfect. Nutella is a decadent chocolate hazelnut spread from Italy and when you combine it with a chocolate scone and chopped hazelnuts, you should have heaven on a plate. I had a dry hockey puck, but I hope others will have more luck with these than I did. In my defense, making a good scone has a lot to do with baker’s intuition, which I have none of. Plus, the directions for rolling the scones out were complicated at best.

For those of you yearning for diabetes, I highly recommend making the double chocolate loaf with peanut butter and cream cheese spread. I love simple bread/loaf recipes that don’t require yeast or kneading and much like the pumpkin cheddar muffins, this recipe was incredibly easy to whip up. It’s rich, it’s decadent, and it made my toothless eighty-year-old great uncle giggle like a schoolgirl. To me, that’s the ultimate test of a recipe’s yum factor, and this one passed the test with flying colors.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, November 18th 2010

Ripe from Around Here

barbara — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By jae steele

Arsenal Pulp Press

I'm an avid vegan cookbook collector, and Ripe From Around Here is more than a vegan cookbook. jae steele, a holistic nutritionist from Toronto, offers a neat little package of sustainability, mindfulness, and the politics of food in addition to vegan gourmet recipes in the end. She really does pack it in—the first five chapters alone touch on local eating, container gardening, mindfulness, canning, natural housecleaning, worm composting (vermicomposting), and a four season overview of how to be healthy through the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine. I really enjoyed reading the paragraphs on how to eat an apple mindfully, and what to holistically focus on during each of the four seasons to promote overall well-being.

But what about the recipes? Yay! The rest of the chapters are a vegan journey, taking us through how to make your own oat milks, nut milks, and rice milks (how much more local can you get?) to West African Groundnut Stew. My mother-in-law and I tried the Tomato Chard Bake the first few days I had the book, and were definitely pleased. A little warning though... the bake took an hour to prepare. This is not fast food, folks. If you have three hungry children waiting for dinner, you have to be strategic about making these kinds of entrees.

You can definitely tell that steele is a nutrition counselor too, because many of her recipes call for spelt and oat flours, coconut oils, and other ingredients you might not immediately have lying around or can pick up at your local corner store. Some of the ingredients will be more expensive. Convenience and price are two big factors for myself and most struggling people I know. I've come to a personal revelation though that perhaps as people in the U.S., maybe we should be spending more money on the food we eat. Michael Pollan, of Omnivore's Dilemma fame, mentioned once that our portions of income on food has declined but our spending on health care has increased. Food is health care.

Ripe From Around Here comes right on time, adding to the zeitgeist of getting back to the basics, eating more locally (and with real food!), and supporting a growing sustainability movement. It can be challenging sometimes to find the time and money, but after finding ways to work it, sitting down to your own homemade Grandmother Palmer's Baked Beans (baked for over four hours!) will be worth it. Mine are just starting to simmer and they smell delicious.

Written by: Maleka Fruean, November 7th 2010

Ripe From Around Here

andrea — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By jae steele

Arsenal Pulp Press

When jae steele’s Ripe From Around Here arrived, it joined a pile of vegan library books on my kitchen table. I needed inspiration and fresh ideas, and hoped one of the books would help. steele’s book was the star. These are the recipes that will become everyday favorites, and the ones that omnivores will devour, blissfully unaware that no animal products are present.

The first part of Ripe From Around Here lays out steele’s philosophical interests and approach to food. As a holistic nutritionist, steele hopes readers will slow down and eat healthful foods. She presents helpful health information without sounding preachy or heavy-handed. I especially appreciated her emphasis on mindful eating—the importance of taking time to notice our food with all of our senses. The section on seasonal influences, inspired by traditional Chinese medicine, has interesting and practical ideas. steele lays out the numerous food choices available to North American consumers—organic, local—and offers advice on the various benefits.

The recipes are flexible enough to work for cooks who find it challenging to prepare any dinner at all, as well as those who aspire to do things as much from scratch as possible. These dishes are not just for the virtuous; plenty of dessert is included too. Some of the recipes put a tasty twist on dishes I already make, such as root and barley soup and Mexican stuffed bell peppers. Others, created more for special occasions, I look forward to hungrily. Blueberry lavender ice cream, made with coconut milk, tops this list, followed closely by rosemary mushroom gravy. The tomato chard bake and herbed garden biscuits are sure to become staples in my house.

steele strikes me as a very practical idealist. She does not expect diet purity from readers, but offers up options so that we can make informed choices. For example, many of the recipes call for spelt flour and sunflower oil; steele cites why these are her preferred options, but also knows readers will substitute to suit individual preferences.

As her title hints, steele encourages the use of local ingredients. She also recognizes (as a resident of Toronto) that many delectable ingredients would have to be omitted, and sorely missed, if one sticks to a strictly local diet plan. The key, I think, is to appreciate a lemon as a gift from a warmer climate, and to not take it for granted. Thoughtful, reflective eating can help our health and our local economies.

I actively seek out vegan recipes for their flavors as well as healthfulness. I love the creative use of produce and the variety of grains found in innovative vegan kitchens. Ripe From Around Here provides plenty of tasty options to explore, and steele’s blog offers additional recipes and kitchen ideas. Overall, steele presents food as an opportunity for joy and pleasure.

Written by: Lisa Rand, November 3rd 2010

The Meat Lover's Meatless Cookbook: Vegetarian Recipes Carnivores Will Devour

gita — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Kim O’Donnel

Da Capo Press

The recipes in The Meat Lover's Meatless Cookbook are very good. This cookbook is perfect for people who want to cut down on their meat consumption. Kim O’Donnel describes her motivation for writing this book as the realization that she and her family needed to cut down on their meat consumption for health and environmental reasons. O’Donnel is not a member of a vegetarian cult and does not want to recruit others. She wants to add delicious vegetarian recipes to the meat-heavy North American diet.

To that end, the recipes are organized into fifty-two menus, enough for one year of one meatless dinner each week, and the menus are grouped seasonally to reflect what is available in most regions of the U.S. during that time. Ingredients were selected with supermarket availability in mind so procuring organic virgin unicorn hair is not necessary. The book includes resources for the few items that may not be in the supermarket as well as more readily available substitutes.

People who have experience cooking vegetarian food will be familiar with many of the dishes included in this cookbook, but everyone could benefit from the section, “Kitchen Tricks for Your Sleeve.” “Metric Conversions” and “Resources” are two more universally useful sections in the book. O’Donnel has a folksy writing style and trusts the reader to use ingredients that they have and like, as exemplified in asides about her differences with her husband about the use of sugar in cornbread and noting that home cooks should use their preferences as a guide.

This book offers useful tools to expand one’s cooking repertoire. For example, one menu features ways to cook beans and rice, with varied seasonings for white beans, black beans and pinto or kidney beans, essentially explaining what flavors typically work well with different varieties of beans. This is the kind of information that the reader can build on, and makes this the perfect cookbook for people who are learning to cook. The quibbles I have with the cookbook are that it lacks total cooking and prep times and, as a result, takes some consideration to determine which are the best school-night meals.

Written by: Melissa Ditmore, October 26th 2010

The United Cakes of America: Recipes Celebrating Every State

mandy — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

By Warren Brown

Stewart Tabori & Chang

I’m the girl who never goes to a party empty-handed. I come bearing brownies, fudge, or cake balls for all of the guests. And every week I make my seventy-eight-year-old great uncle something decadent, and usually chocolate. He has an astounding sweet tooth, despite not having a single tooth left in his head. (Maybe it’s from all the sweets?)

But, truth be told, I really dislike baking. It’s too scientific, too laborious, and feels like a chore. I much prefer the pinch-of-this, dash-of-that approach I take to cooking. I’m also not very fond of sweets, but I always find myself making them because it’s what others love. If it were entirely up to me, I’d show up to the party with a perfectly roasted chicken and a fifth of whiskey—but the world does not bend to my will.

Before receiving The United Cakes of America, the baking books I’d encountered only legitimized my distaste of the craft by suggesting odd techniques, requiring specialty equipment, and featuring overly complicated or poorly written recipes. But Warren Brown’s The United Cakes of America flipped a switch in my head and made me realize baking doesn’t have to be a frustrating affair.

Brown is a former lawyer who shifted his focus to baked goods by opening the Washington, D.C. bakery CakeLove in 2002. He wanted to honor the dying art of baking from scratch. Now years later—after scouring the internet, traveling the country to extensively speak to locals, and compiling a sort of Americana cake history—The United Cakes of America is born.

It all begins with an overview that details the finer points of baking, such as the importance of unsalted butter, when to use different types of sugar, and the utility of equipment like scales, stand mixers, and candy thermometers—none of which I have. But I quickly learned that, while these items are ideal, they aren’t strictly necessary for many of the recipes in the book.

Brown breaks each cake down into sections: filling, wet ingredients, dry ingredients, and frosting. You can prepare each component separately, and once it’s time to actually build the cake, your life is made exponentially easier.

The book is split into four sections—The Northeast, The South, The Midwest, and The West—with each state represented by a different sugary confection. We have the likely suspects: Boston’s cream pie, Mississippi’s mud cake, and New York’s cheesecake. But other cakes are a little more… interesting.

Brown chose avocado cupcakes to represent California, my home state. I love avocadoes. I’ve had them in milkshakes, and I’ve eaten them smashed up with milk and sugar (as is common in many Filipino homes), but it would have been more appealing to honor California’s rich Mexican heritage with a tres leches cake, or something equally delicious. I suppose I was just hoping for more, and, frankly, there is something very off-putting about garnishing a cupcake with a slice of avocado.

On the other hand, I really loved the Texas sheet cake. The chocolate cake portion took only minutes to whip up, but the labor intensive (yet well worth the trouble) chocolate pecan icing and sugar pecans threw me for a loop. This is not a cake for the faint of heart; it has enough sweetness to make your teeth hurt, but in the best way. Needless to say, it made my Great Uncle Willy a very happy man.

The Delaware coffee cake was the best I’d ever had. I was sure I’d mess up the nutty, heavily spiced filling and crunchy, ginger-laced topping since I’ve had so many baking mishaps, but after pulling that glorious golden brown cake out of the oven, I felt a sense of accomplishment.

I may become better suited for baking with age, as it requires a great deal of patience. Unlike cooking, it’s not about instant gratification. There is dough to rise, cakes to cool, and frosting to set up. It’s something different, something slower, something sweet. How could that ever be a bad thing?

Written by: Tina Vasquez, September 14th 2010

Viva Vegan!: 200 Authentic and Fabulous Recipes for Latin Food Lovers

mandy — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:08:39 +0000

By Terry Hope Romero

Lifelong Books

Let’s just get this out of the way—Terry Hope Romero is the best gift a vegan chef could ever hope for. While I am just a vegetarian, I often find myself flirting with the idea of going vegan. Thanks to Viva Vegan!, though, I can now successfully have a vegan Mexican dinner night.

Now, if you are a vegetarian, chances are you’re familiar with things like seitan and tempeh. If you’re not, no need to worry. Romero begins the book with an extremely helpful section called “The Vegan Latin Pantry,” which itemizes traditional foods necessary for the Latin kitchen and lists vital foods for vegans. The book is helpfully formatted with short paragraphs and text boxes to make the pages more visually interesting—let’s just say that the “These Are a Few of My Favorite Beans” text box has staved off any boredom I was experiencing from my standby black beans and rice lunch.

The 200 recipes in this book are sorted into an impressive fourteen categories, ranging from salsas to tamales. One benefit of having such a range of recipes is that there truly is something for every skill level and every kitchen. Personally, I don’t have a steamer basket or a large lasagna dish, so the tamales weren’t up my alley, but I found plenty of soups, stews, and condiments to try. There aren’t just guacamole and salsa recipes here—Cashew Crema and Chocolate-Chile Mole Sauce make for a delicious condiment section.

In addition to her creativity with condiments, I’ve got to give it to Romero on her commitment to home cooking. An alarming amount of cookbooks seem comfortable recommending that their readers use tons of ingredients that are bought from grocery store shelves, like bread, cakes, and other items that can be made from scratch. While Romero has a few recipes like that, she doesn’t say to head to a specialty store to pick up seitan; she explains how to make your own for chorizo seitan sausages. As someone who’s spent way too much money on seitan in the past, I’m grateful to have an easy recipe to follow that’ll save me money and produce a great dish.

Some of the recipes can be intimidating (I still haven’t tried to conquer making empanada dough), but all of them are well-explained without a hint of condescension. If you’re starving, don’t make the mistake I did by looking at the sixteen pages of full-color pictures. I understand the magic of Photoshop, but digitally-altered or not, that is some fine-looking cuisine. Ultimately, Viva Vegan! is a fun cookbook to read through and experiment with. Romero does a fantastic job of proving that while vegans may have dietary restrictions, there are still plenty of delicious, creative foods to be made and devoured.

Written by: Alyssa Vincent, September 4th 2010

Hungry Town: A Culinary History of New Orleans, the City Where Food Is Almost Everything

admin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Tom Fitzmorris

Stewart Tabori & Chang

I’ve had a long and passionate love affair with New Orleans, although I’ve never been there. In fifth grade, I did my state report on Louisiana, and as a bored teenager in a Los Angeles suburb where everything was bright, shiny, and new, I’d dream of spending my days in the historic French Quarter, hanging out in smoky jazz bars and eating poor boy sandwiches at cramped lunch counters. I idealized the city even further when a childhood friend became a teenage runaway, hitchhiking her way to New Orleans with her much older boyfriend, both of them squatting in abandoned houses and panhandling in the streets. For some reason, that sounded like a beat novel I wanted to be a part of, as opposed to the nightmare it actually was.

Like everyone else, I watched with a heavy heart as one of our nation’s finest cities, so completely unlike any other place because of its history, demographics, and genetic makeup, disappeared off the face of the map, under sludge and murky water. I knew New Orleans would recover—it had to—but I was worried it would never be what it once was, that it would turn into a sad caricature of itself. If the premise of Tom Fitzmorris’ book Hungry Town is correct, no matter what happens, New Orleans will never be lost as long as its food culture survives and thrives, breathing life into the incessantly struggling city.

Fitzmorris’s thesis is actually quite simple: Food saved New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Now, I know many won’t believe that. I also know that recommending this book to lovers of food, regional cooking, or the city of New Orleans itself wouldn’t be fair. Truth be told, there are many who won’t understand the purpose of this book. Many will not like the author’s obsessive details or encyclopedic knowledge of the city’s food and restaurants. They'll think he's pompous, self-important, and crazy to think that it was the poor boy or red beans and rice or simple gumbo that saved the city—and that’s fair. But for those of us who know the power of food, its ability to bring people together, to calm the nerves and the soul, and quiet the hunger, we can believe that Fitzmorris is right in every way.

The author is a lifelong New Orleanian who’s been critiquing the city’s food, writing about it in various formats, and discussing it endlessly on his radio show for over thirty years. It all started in the late 1970s, when he began publishing a newsletter called The New Orleans MENU, which lives on today on his website. It would be an understatement to say that Fitzmorris is a fanatic, a man completely obsessed with his city’s food culture, its Creole and Cajun cuisine, and its restaurants; Hungry Town is the embodiment of this fanaticism.

After Hurricane Katrina, the author was forced to stay away from his beloved city for longer than he ever had before: about two weeks. While away, he received word that some of the city’s restaurants were reopening, using bottled water and small burners to feed the crowds that braved the storm. Fitzmorris began calling chefs and friends in the area, each day adding to a list on his website that featured all the eateries that were opening their doors. Just two weeks after the hurricane blew the lid off of New Orleans, twenty-two restaurants were open for service. It is because of this and similar compelling evidence that Fitzmorris believes that food saved New Orleans and that its slow-coming rebirth is beginning in the kitchen.

Interwoven with recipes for delicious New Orleans treats, menus from some of the city’s oldest restaurants, timelines, and a rundown of every major player in the New Orleans food scene, is the story of how Fitzmorris' love affair with his city’s food began. I thought Hungry Town was a beautiful ode to a great city and its wonderful food, but I know it’s not for everyone. This summer, I will be traveling by train to New Orleans and I’ll be using Hungry Town as my restaurant guide, which I think is a testament to how informative Fitzmorris' book is and how alluring a beignet and a cafe au lait can be.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, July 11th 2010

Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Mark Scarbrough, Bruce Weinstein

Stewart Tabori & Chang

Finally, a cookbook with some pizazz! Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter was written by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, food lovers, life partners, and exactly the kind of people who could breathe life into the sometimes stale world of food writing.

The recipes featured in Ham are solid, easy to follow, and delicious, but I was pleasantly surprised by how witty and well-written the book was. Along with the recipes, readers are treated to informative pig/ham-related tidbits sprinkled throughout, testers’ notes for many of the recipes, and personal stories from the writers. It was this last bit that I was particularly fond of.

I’ve never laughed out loud reading a cookbook, but after following the couple’s attempt to make their own dry-cured ham at home I couldn’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of it. If it’s done incorrectly and consumed, it can result in “respiratory failure and paralysis,” but even when the ham is drying properly, it goes through a period where it is regularly “dripping ugly bits of mucousy sludge.” Obviously, dry curing your own ham isn’t a good idea, but checking out this cookbook is. Follow Weinstein and Scarbrough on their endearing journey as they reveal all you ever wanted to know–and in some cases, some things you didn’t want to know–about that porky, fatty thing people all over the world call ham.

I already know this is one of those cookbooks I will go back to time and time again for family get-togethers, dinner parties, and plain ol’ good eatin’. I’m not one to spend a tremendous amount of money on meat when grocery shopping, but I couldn’t have done this book justice without trying one of the duo’s recipes for fresh ham. Thankfully, the book appeared on my doorstep just around Easter, which provided good reason to schlep a massive ham home from the local Mexican market. Which, by the way, was the only non-Whole Foods-like market around to have fresh ham; different than the variety you see at grocery stores around April that are pre-cooked. The recipe called for a ten pounder, which would reportedly feed “six teenage boys, sixteen adults, or twenty-six ‘twentysomething’ models,” so I knew my bone-in twelve pounder would be enough for my voracious family.

The roasted fresh ham with a maple-spice glaze was ridiculously delicious and so unlike the bizarre, overly sweet orange juice-glazed and pineapple-ringed monstrosity I grew up eating when my grandpa did all of the holiday cooking. No, this was crispy-skinned, moist, and had the perfect amount of sweetness thanks to a sugar, cinnamon, allspice, clove, and nutmeg rub down and a good basting of Grade A maple syrup.

All of the other recipes I tested revolved around prosciutto, that salty, fatty, delicious Italian ham that Weinstein and Scarbrough managed to work into everything from pizza to quesadillas–and I loved it all. Some of my favorites were the pizza with dry-cured ham and artichokes. Stubborn as I am, I refused to use store-bought dough as the recipe called for, but I think the dish was better for it because good lord, everyone needs to eat a homemade pizza laced with fatty Italian ham and artichokes.

When testing recipes on my parents, as I often do, my mom would always complain that I never used enough meat; the woman loved her some meat. She seemed excited to hear that I was testing recipes from a book devoted to pork, one of her favorite animals (to eat). One of the last meals I ever cooked for my mom before she died unexpectedly in early May was Ham's recipe for chive and cheddar ham biscuits with honey mustard. I threw some cheese on her biscuit for good measure because if there’s anything she loved more than meat, it was cheese. Needless to say she loved it and I love that a silly cookbook provided one of our last moments together as mother and daughter. Life–and food–is funny like that sometimes.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, June 29th 2010

The Vegetarian Option

admin — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Simon Hopkinson

Stewart Tabori & Chang

In the past, Simon Hopkinson has been referred to as the best cook in Britain who nobody in the States has heard of, but I’m hoping this will soon change. After devouring The Vegetarian Option, I know the chef has a lot to offer when it comes to beautiful, simple food.

Hopkinson first gained acclaim with his 1995 cookbook Roast Chicken and Other Stories, but it seems as if the public has always been a little behind in praising him because it wasn’t until ten years later in 2005 that a panel of chefs, food writers, and consumers in the British magazine _Waitrose Food Illustrated _ voted it “the most useful cookbook of all time.”

Obviously, roast chicken does not a vegetarian make, which is the reason why The Vegetarian Option was so interesting to me: It was written by a non-vegetarian and the book allows readers to determine how strictly they want to adhere to the vegetarian guidelines—giving them the vegetarian option. Hopkinson even urges readers to add protein to some of the dishes if it suits their fancy.

The book, though a bit stiff, was right up my alley because in terms of cooking, there’s nothing I hate more than tortured vegetables. I’m sure you’ve witnessed this: People who don’t really like vegetables slather broccoli in cheese sauce, encase cauliflower in casseroles, and boil everything else until it’s within an inch of its life. Hopkinson’s recipes honor the integrity of the vegetables and by breaking them down into seven sections (Vegetables, Herbs, Pasta, Legumes & Grains, Rice, Eggs, and Fruit), he ensures that the book will include something even the most staunch vegetable hater will be sure to love-or at least like.

Thanks to Hopkinson, I am now the proud owner of a simple Korean kimchi recipe (though it takes five days to ferment and come to fruition), which I used to love eating as a kid when visiting my best friend. Her mother, aunts, and grandma used to spend entire weekends making gallons of the spicy cabbage delicacy and though Hopkinson’s isn’t as spicy and doesn’t include shrimp paste (many consider this essential to kimchi), it’s a nice standby to have on hand.

Lately, I’m very big on conflicting flavors in a single dish. Perhaps this is why I went crazy for Hopkinson’s incredibly healthy and oh-so-delicious carrot salad with cilantro and green chili. Carrots are one of those vegetables that don’t get enough play; they’re jam-packed with essential vitamins and nutrients and delicious eaten raw or cooked. This salad requires a measly seven ingredients (including salt), but the addition of coriander seeds, fresh cilantro, and a spicy jalapeno really bring it to life.

Another standout was the broiled eggplant with pesto; this recipe couldn’t get any easier. After blending together a classic pesto (olive oil, pine nuts, basil, garlic, and parmesan) in my rickety and ancient food processor, I simply smeared it on top of eggplant halves and broiled them until they were golden and bubbly. Frankly, I loved this because it’s stupid simple, yet I would have never thought to combine eggplant and pesto on my own to such delicious results.

At the age of twenty-five, I’ve only encountered one vegetable that I do not like: parsnips. Because of this reason, I gave myself permission to “torture” them a bit by following Hopkinson’s recipe for cheese-crusted fried parsnips with romesco sauce, which is an outrageously tasty blend of almonds, olive oil, garlic, chili, sundried tomatoes, and peppers. Truth be told, an old shoe would taste good if it were crusted in cheese, fried, and dipped in romesco sauce, but these delicious little treats made me a parsnip believer.

I could go on forever about The Vegetarian Option, but unfortunately I can’t. I will say this, though: Whoever said that vegetarians are missing out doesn’t understand all that vegetables are capable of.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, June 12th 2010

Amor y Tacos: Modern Mexican Tacos, Margaritas, and Antojitos

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Deborah Schneider

Stewart, Tabori & Chang

I have an exciting announcement to make: I’ve never enjoyed a cookbook as thoroughly as I have Deborah Schneider’s Amor y Tacos. I grew up eating Mexican food nearly every day, and as an adult, I still make homemade Mexican food the way my father taught me at least two times a week—not the gloppy, heavy Americanized stuff full of cheddar cheese and sour cream, but simple, hearty, good-for-you-food that’s easy to make and even easier on your budget. This is exactly why I’ve fallen madly in love with Schneider’s cookbook; though a majority of the dishes require a bit of prep work, the meals come together quickly in the end and she effortlessly showcases affordable, accessible, and delicious modern Mexican food.

Another reason to love Amor y Tacos: Schneider focuses heavily on Mexican street food, which is the best food Mexico has to offer and just so happens to be a personal obsession of mine. I went crazy testing recipes from this book; I wanted to make everything in it, but I’m going to try to show some restraint and just talk about a few of the dishes, all of which were from the Antojitos (think appetizers), Tacos, and Salsa chapters.

Generally, I try to stay away from fast food, but I’ve somehow convinced myself that eating outrageously unhealthy food is okay—as long as I’ve made it in my own kitchen and kept a close eye on the amount of salt, fat, and other worrisome cooking essentials that quickly make "good" food “bad.” Admittedly, not all of the street food featured in the book is good for you or what some would refer to as “authentic Mexican.” This is because, like all culinary cultures, there’s a lot of borrowing, and if it’s a dish genuinely served on the streets of Mexico, it’s good (and authentic) enough for me.

All of this is just to say that the first recipe I tackled was for something seemingly American and ridiculously bad for you: Schneider’s Mexican Hot Dog with Chipotle Ketchup, otherwise known as the Perro Caliente. In short: a bacon wrapped hot dog encased in a bun that’s been slathered with garlic mayo and griddled. All of this fatty goodness gets topped with pickled jalapenos, pico de gallo salsa (diced Roma tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and lime juice), and a tart, spicy ketchup spiked with chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. I feel the need to point out that I will never again be able to eat a hot dog unless it’s topped with pico de gallo; it’s a marriage made in heaven. It’s that little bit of crunchy, juicy freshness that cuts through the fat and makes a hot dog more than just a hot dog.

Another standout was the Shrimp Taco Dorado, and like all of the tacos in Schneider’s book, what really makes them pop are the interesting salsas she chooses to accompany them. Pico de gallo is pretty customary for tacos, but Schneider’s shrimp tacos also get topped with guacamole that’s spiked with mangoes, tequila, and goat cheese, as well as mango habanero salsa, chipotle salsa, and a few cilantro sprigs. To me, it’s these simple, easy, yet slightly labor intensive accompaniments that really elevate the tacos to something special.

I wouldn’t be doing the book justice if I didn’t mention the Carne Asada Taco Vampiro. It’s never really explained why this super taco gets called a vampire, but who cares when you’re sinking your teeth into what is essentially a quesadilla wrapped around juicy grilled carne asada and topped with guacamole, chipotle salsa, pico de gallo, cotixa cheese, and a sprinkling of the ever ubiquitous cilantro? Seriously, life doesn’t get any better than that.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, May 25th 2010