Cookbook Reviews - The Nut Gourmet

Vegan with a Vengeance
Publisher: Marlowe & Company
© 2005 by Isa Chandra Moskowitz
ISBN: 1569243581

Try out Sample Recipes: The Best Pumpkin Muffins and Tempeh Bacon

Nice Extras:

Beautiful photographs of some of the dishes.
A list of tools and kitchen stuff.
A list of what to stock in the post punk pantry.

Average Rating: (3 reviews total)

Reviewer: Vegan Mum from California, U.S.A.:

If I could own only one vegan cookbook, Vegan With a Vengeance would be it. More varied in flavors than Mediterranean Vegan, more decadently abundant in delicious desserts than Voluptuous Vegan, and more reliably yummy than The Candle Cafe Cookbook, Vegan With a Vengeance rocks. My hard-core meat-eating mother loves the BBQ Pomegranate Tofu (which you can make with regular molasses if you don't have pomegranate molasses) and every cookie I've made from this cookbook (pumpkin, chocolate chip, you name it). While minor errors abound, they're easy to spot and work around; similarly, the longer and more time-consuming recipes are easy to simplify on the fly. My family's other favorite recipes include all the marinated tofu recipes, pizzas, seitan recipes, curries, Brooklyn Pad Thai, Millet and Spinach Polenta with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto (really easy, despite the long restauranty title), Revolutionary Spanish Omelet (skip the time-consuming sauce and use ketchup instead--yum!), Stewed Tofu and Potatoes in Miso Gravy (add miso after turning off the heat, if you want its macrobiotic benefits), Mashed Potatoes with Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy (miraculously good), knishes (spinach is best), and tempeh recipes. I cook from this book almost daily. Get your butt to a bookstore and get your copy now! (I have no affiliation or connection with the author or publisher of this book, am merely a very satisfied consumer.)

Reviewer: RaeVynn from Washington, U.S.A.:

This book has some terrific, real food.
From scratch, real cooking!
This is where I learned how to make delicious seitan, scrambled tofu, and muffins!
All of her recipes have the distinction of being real. Not fancied up creations for a cookbook, but recipes that people actually eat.
The variety of food is good, the instructions are simple, the sidebars are entertaining.

Reviewer: KF from Georgia, U.S.A.:

This is my favorite cookbook. In addition to the recipes, it is full of charming and inspiring anecdotes. I am a somewhat lazy vegan, but this book makes it less of a challenge.
The recipes really are inexpensive compared with most. With other cookbooks, I have noticed that you can sometimes find yourself spending $50 on one meal, but this one doesn't have that problem.

I haven't tried all the recipes, but I look forward to experimenting with her vegan pizza. I'm not Jewish, but I always loved having matzo ball soup at friends' houses growing up, and her recipe for vegan matzo ball soup is fabulous. The vegan equivalent of the comfort of chicken and dumpling soup.

A great bonus is the section that shows you how to make your own vegan brunch cafe. I don't know that I will ever do this, but is was fun to think about. That just shows you an example of the DIY attitude of the book.

The deserts are especially great, because the ingredients are not complicated or hard to find, and they don't turn out boring or greasy like vegan desserts often can. On the contrary, they taste better than their non-vegan counterparts! She has an amazing recipe that emulates Ding Dong cupcakes, and they taste better than the originals.

Don't let the title scare you. This book is all heart. For a taste of the enjoyable style of this book, you can watch Isa's public access TV show on the net. It's called the Post Punk Kitchen.