Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Has anyone tried this book yet? I'm curious if it's actually as good of a bridge for the masses as the title implies or if it's just good advertising.

http://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Cooking-Car ... 1609412427

thanks!
Alden

My mother-in-law bought this (I think she saw it on the Ellen show) and plans to cook me things out of it, so I'm psyched about that! I browsed through it at her house, and this was my impression:

1) Lots of pictures! Yay!

2) Some mildly offensive or annoying statements ("I don't cook vegan food I cook food that's vegan"... by which he means vegan food is gross, and you can only make good food that happens to be vegan by subbing tofu or gardein into traditional meaty recipes). This is balanced by a nice little opening by Ellen's partner. So... she's vegan, and her comments are great. The chef is not vegan, and his comments can be kind of annoying.

3) Lots of substitutions that, while not necessarily bad, are the kind of things you could figure out on your own (take a meat recipe... and substitute tofu!). Not all the recipes are like this, but a lot of them are, for a long time vegan, a bit obvious.

4) I saw at least one recipe that looked unnecessarily and kind of hilariously fussy. It was a recipe for fried chicken that involved crumbling (chopping?) gardein and rolling it in wonton wrappers and then breading and frying those.... What the fork, just bread and fry the gardein, it's great (I've fed it to omnivores for chrissakes).

5) And yet... a lot of the recipes look really yummy.

While I don't think this cookbook would work for everyone, I think it will work for you if you're a new vegan. It's also probably a great cookbook for omnivores who periodically need to feed vegans (or omnivores who want to experiment with vegan food). For long time vegans, I think you could get similar food by grabbing one of your old meat-y cookbooks and making some basic substitutions.

That said, I never cooked before going vegan (which was right after I got out of college), so I don't actually have a cookbook full of beloved omni recipes to veganize, so this might work for me. I suspect my MIL will get me this for my bday in June, and I'll report back if she does!

thanks! After looking more closely at the amazon link I realize this book JUST came out so it makes more sense to me now that there wasn't already a thread on it. We've been vegan for a while and are comfortable with the cooking we do for ourselves, but we haven't amassed a list of vegan dishes that are guaranteed successes for omnis yet and are looking for something that will help in that direction.

Yeah, I think this would be a good book for cooking for omnis depending on your philosophy. I know some people avoid feeding omnis meat substitutes, but I find they go over really well. Gardein chicken fingers, soy curl steak sandwiches, chili made with crumbles, etc. are all things I've fed midwest omnis (who are vegetable phobic) with great success. I can usually fool omnis with these things. So I think this cookbook could work for that.

I will probably buy this to try and find more recipes my youngest kids will eat. My middle son especially refuses most vegan meals, with the exception of PC meatless chicken nuggets and meals made with only vegetables (last weekend - stuffed peppers with no beans in his). He is a good vegetable eater, though.

Interesting...please report back if you get it!

I have an Omni partner. He is a good sport, we plan our meals weekly together, and although I refuse to cook him meat or dairy, I try to cook vegan food he likes (i.e. he hates tofu and mushrooms, loves lentils and curry etc)

On the surface, this might appeal to us...but he is so funny. He doesnt like meal substitutes very much (except for my hommade seitan and tempeh sometimes). He always says "If I am going to eat vegan I WANT VEGETABLES DAMN IT, not that fake shiitake".

I saw the author, Ellen and Portia on Rachael Ray yesterday. I was initially interested in the book until I realized that it used a lot of fake meat. I don't have a problem with using them but find that the sodium content is ridiculously high so try not to use them more than twice a week and prefer to use them less often. I do think it would be a good book for people who don't have this concern.

My copy just arrived from Amazon and I'm fairly disappointed. It's all fake meats and fake cheeses and salad. The most interesting recipe is the "Southern Fried Chick'n" one, but that calls for brand-name goods that don't exist in the UK with no suggested substitutions so fork it. I might re-list it on Amazon and send it on it's merry way to some poor unsuspecting vegan elsewhere.

The book is about half salads (and if there's anything carnivores love more than meat it's salad) and there's stupid drinks section with three cocktails and then a load of things like hibiscus tea. According to the blurb, giving a carnivore hibiscus tea will make them not "miss the meat". If this works for Roberto Martin, then I think we've just found ourselves a wizard.

The cakes and desserts look good, but cakes always look good so duh.

The recipes themselves look fine but not interesting. I wouldn't be disappointed if I were given any of them in a meal, but they are all a bit blah.

I thought that "for carnivores" would imply more hearty protein-rich foods, but this is all salads, obvious recipes with fake meats and cheeses to make them vegan and obvious vegetable recipes and constant name-dropping. Basically, I think the title is misleading. If it was titled "Things I cook for Ellen and Portia when I'm not busy mentioning that I cook for Ellen and Portia", it would be much more accurate.

I'm not impressed.

aaaand I've printed off the Amazon return slip and will put it in the postbox this afternoon. Not for me.

I think the main point is that it's not vegan food for vegans, it's just food that is vegan that people who eat might may not object to overly.

What I think I want is a "Carnivorous Cooking for Vegans" as that's how I cook anyway. Someone pay me to write one?

Thanks for the review, Gulliver. I have been waiting for a copy from the library, which is my usual route for new cookbooks. (If I take a cookbook out three times and don't want to bring it back then I buy it)

I made the roasted tomato sauce a few days ago and it was lovely. Simple, and pretty similar to when I just wing it, which is really a nice thing to realize. The buckwheat pancakes have a great texture and taste (I subbed coconut oil for the earth balance). I also made the chocolate chip cookies and they had ener-g in them, which always makes me suspicious of a chef. They were fine, though...but i like my go-to recipes from Isa's texture more.
Over all, I like the vibe of the book and currently have it from the library, but I don't plan on buying it. Great pictures, though. I will make another recipe or two, maybe the burrata salad, before returning it.

I had a flick through it at the bookstore last week and this is exactly why I put it back. I don't need a recipe for fried chicken that just takes a pre-made vegan chicken cutlet and, well, fries it. I could figure that out just fine on my own. Those obvious substitutions make the recipes pretty uncreative and uninteresting to me.

Beautifully designed book, though!

Yeah, someone received a lot of Gardein support, I'm figuring. There's a bunch of vegan cheese love, too. Speaking of the fried chickin - I *do* think it's intriguing that he calls to wrap it in a rice paper roll before frying, though. I'm guessing it's like yuba there.

Does anyone know if the sliders in the book are just made with gardein? My mom saw Ellen on tv talking about how she served the sliders at a party and none of the guests knew they were meatless. So my mom has been wanting to get the book just for that one recipe, but if it's just gardein, I'll tell her not to bother.

The sliders call for veggie patties and tempeh bacon (no recipe is given for that, either). There are plenty of from-scratch recipes, don't get me wrong, but it's definitely a book for people (non and new vegans) who will find it easier to sub a for b when it comes to new vegan things.

That was the one thing that stood out to me too! (When I looked through it at Barnes & Noble, but didn't buy it). Sounds interesting. I also want to taste his rice + beans recipe, because he says if you make one thing from the book you should make that, but it uses two kinds of Field Roast! ($$$)

I have made the Red Beans and rice recipe multiple times. It really IS delicious. Though the recipe does call for two types of the admittedly quite pricey Field Roast sausage, it only uses a half a package of each type.

Following the dried bean recipe provided (you can also use canned beans if you prefer) I double the recipe and then separately freeze the extra cooked beans and Field Roast sausages so they are poised and ready for the next time a rice and beans hankering strikes! What with the generous amount of beans and rice called for in the recipe, I think the cost per serving ends up being pretty reasonable, especially if you are rounding things out with a salad or some sort of vegetable side.

I made the stuffed mushrooms, and they were really good, but they were basically mushrooms stuffed with daiya and tofurkey sausage. Omnis did eat and like them.

I thought this thread was about a different book. There's a free e-book with the same title by a different author, and you can download it here:
http://vegancookingforcarnivores.com/