Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Terry Hope Romero, Isa Moskowitz, Terry Romero
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Book Reviews of Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook
Book Review: This is one of my favorite vegan cookbooks
Summary: 5 Stars
I love this cookbook. The recipes are fun, easy and best of all almost all of the ingrediants can be found in your local supermarket. So far I have loved everything that I have made from this book. My favorite is the chick pea cutlets.. Book Review: Veganomicon forever!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
OH MY GOD! This is the best cookbook I have ever used in my life!
You've got to buy it right now, if no for other reason than to make the Chocolate Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies! They will forever change your life!
You also have to try the Creamy Tomato Soup, the Baja Tacos, the Chickpea Cutlets, and the Chile-Chocolate Mole! .....Hell, you just gotta try all the recipes! I've made most of them by now, and they are all just perfect!
BUY THIS BOOK!!
Book Review: It's a celebration of food.
Summary: 5 Stars
As an experienced cook, but a new vegan (I had never even been a vegetarian before), this cookbook is just what I needed, and I'm so grateful that I found it!
True to its name, this is a behemoth of a cookbook that covers a huge amount of ground. It gives respectful attention to all types of meals, from mains to soups, salads to casseroles, sandwiches to cookies. My favourite is the "Mix & Match" section, which has many recipes for what would usually be called 'sides' - small dishes of vegetables, grains, tofu/tempeh/seitan or legumes - that you can combine however you like to form a solid and diverse meal. There's also a very useful 'basics' section where all sorts of things are explained, from knife techniques to how to cook most major grains and legumes.
The recipes have a diverse range of regional influences, from Mexican to Northern Slavic, from Southeast Asian to French. The authors don't timidly follow the traditions of all the cuisines they borrow from, but neither do they clumsily make one big homogenised mess of them. Instead, they confidently, but respectfully, borrow from all sorts of cuisines to make a diverse range of dishes that, even if they are unorthodox, still make sense.
I've heard complaints from vegans that many vegan cookbooks are too health-food'y, to the point of being boring or unappealing. Not this one. Don't get me wrong, the overwhelming majority of recipes in this book are most definitely very healthy: fresh vegetables, legumes, and various other wholefoods feature prominently and abundantly. But as you peruse the recipes, you get the distinct feeling that this is a book that, more than anything else, celebrates food. When I first decided to go vegan, I was apprehensive about how limited my diet would become - this book, however, has put my mind forever at ease in that regard.
A good tendency of this cookbook is that the dishes all seem to be very 'do-able'. Although the recipes rarely call for processed ingredients or lazy shortcuts that would compromise quality and flavour, neither are they overly laborious. So far, I haven't found a recipe that looked too hard to bother with, and most of them I could happily make on a weeknight.
I really like the way the recipes are presented. Each of them gives an estimate of the preparation time, has directions that are clear and concise but not clinical, and provides a short 'prologue' from the authors (a feature that's sorely lacking from many cookbooks). These prologues often give you a good idea of the character of the dish, what it goes well with, and some potential pitfalls to look out for while making it. And the girls write with such a pleasant style and great sense of humour that they're worth reading just for that.
Of course, no cookbook is perfect, and neither is this one. Firstly, for a non-American, the ye olde measuring system they use - with ounces, 1/4 inches, Fahrenheits and all the rest of it - is distracting. Secondly, and more importantly, the recipes - in my experience - have been a bit hit and miss. But when I say "miss", I don't mean that they didn't work, or that they were dreadful, but simply that they weren't as terrific as I'd hoped. However, I've never met a cookbook that didn't have some misses, and the Veganomicon hit-miss ratio has so far been pretty good. Furthermore, when the dishes have been good, they've often been fabulous.
Since the cookbook has its imperfections, I was going to give it 4 stars. But then I thought about what it is that I ultimately look for in a cookbook. I concluded that I want a cookbook that will make reliably good dishes, several of which will become lasting favourites, forever enriching my repertoire. If the cookbook is really good, then it will also excite me about food; it'll be a book I can depend on to inspire me when I'm feeling low on ideas and motivation to cook. The Veganomicon has not only been a reliable source of good dishes, but it is flooding my repertoire with new favourites, so far rivalling any cookbook before it in this department. I have also found its pages to be full of inspiration. Before I bought it, I was excited about becoming a vegan for ethical reasons. Now I'm also excited about it for culinary reasons. 5 stars.
Book Review: The go-to cookbook in my kitchen
Summary: 5 Stars
Veganomicon, along with Isa's previous Vegan With a Vengeance, are the go-to cookbooks in my kitchen. I use other cookbooks, sure, but these are the ones that are spattered with sauce, splashed with water, and generally look like they've survived a culinary war.
There's a little bit of everything in this cookbook; quick recipes that I can whip together without too much planning or special ingredient shopping as well as more complex dishes that I can use for fancier gatherings.
Book Review: Food So good!
Summary: 5 Stars
I just bought this book a few weeks ago and have already made quite a few recipes out of it, and everything has come out wonderful!
I tend to have bad luck when cooking from vegetarian/raw/vegan cook books but the authors were spot on with this collection.
I use this book to plan 75% of my meals and have not been let down yet.
It also lists soy free, gluten free, sugar free, recipes and
has a section on how to correctly cook vegetables
and includes a party menu guide
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!