Veganomicon (10th Anniversary Edition)

No, no, it's none of those. It's the doorstop of a cookbook that you hold in your precious hands with over 250 recipes that since 2007 really have become some of the most requested recipes by both vegans and nonvegans alike. It's been around just long enough that we've met full-grown adult plant eaters who tell us this was the book that taught them how to make vegan meals in high school, creating a whole generation of then vegan-curious teens who are now vegan-forward grown-ups. We're like the J. K. Rowlings of vegan cookbook authors: just substitute the mountains of money with piles of chickpeas, and that's us. But even back then we knew a big vegan cookbook needed a big vegan name (to be safe, don't read this cookbook backward at the stroke of midnight), and teaching the world to say "vee-gahn-NOM-ikon" has been almost as fun as instructing the masses on how to unlock the secrets of great homemade vegan food in their own kitchen.

This is the book that was the proverbial flax egg before the unchicken and it set the stage for cookbooks from Isa and Terry for years to come. While we've both gone on to write dessert books together and our own separate books focused on brunch, veganized Latino food, salad, and weeknight meals, people are always excited to talk about this one.

The Veganomicon is a big, bold vegan cookbook that doesn't hold back any punches. But don't be scared; she's still quite a softy. She's like a love song ('80s power ballad, with some light '70s rock and a touch of postpunk angst) to our favorite things about vegan cooking—its diverse, delicious flavors and limitless possibilities.

But enough with the pop-culture references; what the heck is it, really? Well, it's a good old-fashioned, all-purpose cookbook. And when we say "all-purpose" we mean it. You'll soon master the art of homemade seitan, unlock the mysteries of tofu, and know what the hell to do with tempeh. Savory sauces, tasty grains, and loads of vegetables will round out your vegan feast. Or if one-dish meals are what you're after, we'll take care of you with hearty casseroles, luscious pastas, nourishing soups, and filling full-meal salads jam packed with protein and rockin' textures… we mean business when it comes to stick-to-your ribs food.

Many of the recipes were written for everyday meals, in hopes that you won't even need to look at the recipe again after making it a few times. You know, the kind of chow you can whip up any night of the week with your pantry staples and some seasonal produce. But you can also trust this cookbook when you're looking for an extravagant spread to impress, say, your in-laws, your meat-lovin' grandma, or the mayor of your town when she stops by.

Besides giving you recipes, we've included lots of basic cooking information. Maybe you already know how to roast pumpkin, soak beans, and toast millet. In that case—awesome! (Then you can just be like, "Shut up, Isa and Terry!" and move on to an adventurous coconut Bundt cake or pasta enhanced with avocado.) But we also wrote this book with the beginner cook in mind, or maybe the forgetful cook who can't be bothered to memorize grain-to-water cooking ratios or the baking time for sweet potatoes. So, we've included preparation guides for beans, grains, and veggies (see here).

RECIPES WE WISH WE GREW UP WITH

"How do you come up with a recipe?" is a question we get from time to time… why nobody believes us when we mutter things about sacrificing beets under the full moon, we'll never guess. Instead, be content in knowing that we are tireless and slightly obsessed foodies. There's not a vegetable we don't adore (except a certain so-called baby corn), nor a spice that doesn't take up precious real estate in our spice racks.

It helps that we call the greatest city in the world our home. New York City is a supermarket of almost every flavor of ethnic cuisine. We can't help but be inspired by it. It's what we're thinking about when munching on crispy yet soft scallion pancakes or tucking into a saucy eggplant rollatini, when digging into a sub sandwich bursting with tangy barbecued seitan or scooping up that last bit of hummus with freshly baked pita bread. We get flashes of inspiration after finally putting down that huge canvas bag on the kitchen floor; the one filled with gorgeous Brussels sprouts still on the stalk, creamy yellow ears of corn, or voluptuous butternut squash from the farmers' market, all grown within a few dozen miles of the city and lugged home for a few more on the subway.

During the course of developing recipes and writing Veganomicon, we kept coming back to this phrase: Recipes you wish you'd grown up with. These meals were not born in spotless, stainless-steel, made-for-TV kitchens. The recipes that await you in Veganomicon were created by two women who cook, live, and eat in real, urban kitchens. Since we're both apartment dwellers still to this day, these are lessons learned from waging wars with temperamental gas burners, moody old ovens passed down from apartment rental to rental, and tiny little cabinets bursting with pots, gadgets, and groceries. This is food made while chatting with significant others, gossiping with friends, and shooing nosy pets off the countertops. In other words, this is kind of food you make and eat while life happens.

LET THEM EAT TEMPEH

Fans of our no-budget, filmed in Isa's little red kitchen in Park Slope, early 2000s cooking show The Post Punk Kitchen and Vegan with a Vengeance were hungry, and they let us know. We learned not only did they want vegan good, but they were starved for both new ideas for preparing whole foods and for new takes on old favorites: tastier tofu scrambles, better bean burgers, the perfect cheeseless mac 'n' cheese, and for the green thumbs out there, what-in-the-world-do-I-do-with-all-this-zucchini?

We didn't make this cookbook alone. Well, by definition, we wrote it together so already we weren't alone. The results are our shared wisdom knitted from years of eating a bazillion meals and engaging in conversations about food with vegans—and aspiring vegans too—of all stripes. It taught us that no matter how long it's been since you've stopped eating hamburgers—be it eight months or eight years—the common question seemed to be, "What else is there for dinner/lunch/breakfast/midnight snack/Groundhog Day party?" besides tofu hot dogs or pasta and jarred sauce?

This book also owes a huge debt to our secret fleet of recipe testers scattered across the globe like poppy seeds on a bagel. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, we've had the support of this tireless bunch of testing maniacs cooking and giving us feedback for many months during this book's development. Each recipe has been tested by several people, from new cooks to old hands, from teenagers, grad students with day jobs, stay-at-home dads to globe-trotting grandmothers. Their feedback and guidance informed this cookbook every step of the way.

VEGAN FOOD = NORMAL FOOD

And there is a larger reason why we wrote this book. Our mission in life is to prove that vegan food doesn't have to be repetitive, difficult, bland, or inaccessible. So, let us bore you for a few moments with our culinary philosophy.

There are some people who think that the way we eat is the way it always has been and the way it always will be. Yet to look at the history of food is to see that cuisines are in constant flux, traveling all over the world and taking root from one continent to the next. The foods that are currently available to us influence our entire culinary identity, and that identity is ever shifting. For example, we think of Italian food as loaded with tomato-y goodness, yet the tomato was not widely used in Italy until the eighteenth century, which in the grand scheme of things is a pizza throw away from present times. Just like that, our definition of what makes a complete, satisfying meal can forever change. In today's world, average folks are evolving and learning that dinner need not be defined by a big ol' chunk of meat surrounded by a few bits of overboiled vegetables.

The beauty of this culinary whippersnapper—vegan cuisine—is that it draws influences from every part of the world to create an entirely new way to eat. And we explore the dickens out of that in the Veganomicon: stuffing samosa filling into baked potatoes, throwing apples into green chile, tossing lemongrass into risotto. Tradition always starts somewhere, and we hope that something in these pages will inspire a few new seedlings of tradition to take root.

With love (once again) from Queens & Brooklyn, Terry and Isa

You might be wondering what all those cute little icons right at the beginning of each recipe mean. Behold, the mystery revealed! With just a flick of the eye muscle, you'll know whether a recipe is gluten-free, low-fat, or soy-free. You'll also know whether you can just shop at Giganto-Mart or need to make an additional stop at the Organic Natural Wonderland grocery before cooking dinner—plus an approximation of how long things will take once you've procured all your ingredients.

However, if you're still living in the '90s, this icon means most regular old grocery stores should do the trick. Our view on "supermarket friendly" might differ from yours, but to gauge this accurately we made sure that the supermarket closest to Isa's house in Omaha had all the items on the shelves. With that in mind, recipes featuring tofu and nondairy milk are included in this icon, but agar and nutritional yeast, for example, are not.

For your shopping convenience, here's a list of ingredients that feature in these recipes. We call these "pantry" items, but really what we mean is that they are ingredients that we always keep on hand; that way, there is never "nothing to eat." This isn't a list of every ingredient in the book, just some of the ones we can't live without. You may already have a few, or a lot, of these pantry staples already stored away on your kitchen shelves and in your cabinets. If you encounter an ingredient that is new to you, take advantage of the opportunity and try out a recipe or two with this new ingredient. Who knows, you might find yourself wondering how you ever cooked anything without mirin, chickpea flour, or basmati rice!

Beans: A whole dinner can start with just one can of beans. Keep a can or two of the following on hand, but don't limit yourself to: chickpeas, black beans, kidney beans, navy beans, cannellinis, black-eyed peas, and pintos.

Coconut milk, canned or shelf stable: Nothing beats the creaminess coconut gives to bisques and curries. Nothing. There are a lot of canned coconut milk options on the shelves right now, including reduced-fat or "lite" coconut milks that just include more coconut water and less of the good stuff, the coconut cream. We find that the consistently best-tasting one (and the best coconut milk for your money) is pure Thai full-fat coconut milk. Read those labels and avoid any coconut milk with added thickeners, gums, stabilizers, or sugar. One more important thing: Coconut milk should not be confused with the new coconut-based beverages that are similar to almond, rice, soy, etc. milk, and they are not interchangeable.

Pureed pumpkin: We use it in a few entrée-type dishes, but it's also great to have around for baked goods on the off chance that you're not in the mood for chocolate. Be sure that the only ingredient is pure solid-packed pumpkin and that the label doesn't say "pumpkin pie mix."

Tomatoes: Most often our recipes call for crushed tomatoes, but we also keep canned whole tomatoes and plain tomato sauce on hand. For tomato paste, we prefer the kind that comes in a tube. We usually just go for the cheapest brand we can find, unless we're cooking for company—then we buy those fire-roasted ones and deplete our hedge funds. (P.S. What's a hedge fund?)

FRIDGE STAPLES

What is a fridge but a climate-controlled cold pantry? Following are things that a vegan fridge can't be without. Some start out in the pantry but need to be refrigerated once opened.

Applesauce: Sure, it's a nice treat to just eat out of the jar with a spoon, but it's also a great ingredient for baked goods, especially for low-fat baking. If you don't like to collect half-eaten, moldy jars of applesauce in the fridge, we suggest keeping a pack of those little cups of applesauce for kids' lunch boxes with your baking supplies; they're the right portion for your average batch of muffins or pancakes.

Capers: The briny taste of caper berries is the secret ingredient in quite a few of our recipes. They're usually relegated to a garnish in Mediterranean cuisine, but we branch out and use them blended up in dips and salads as well.

Dijon mustard: Sometimes the tangy bite of mustard is just what sauces, casseroles, and salad dressings need to make them complete. Sometimes it isn't. But for those times when it is, keep your fridge stocked with whole-grain Dijon mustard.

Jams and jellies: We use these to add yumminess to baked goods, either in the batter or as a spread or as a filling, as in the Jelly Donut Cupcakes (here). And you don't need us to tell you to eat PB&Js! What flavors do we consider staples? We have at least raspberry, strawberry, and apricot in our pantry at all times.

Miso: Everybody's favorite fermented Japanese paste. The standard kind you'll find in most American supermarkets is made from soybeans and rice, but there are dozens of other varieties out there—brown rice, chickpea, barley—all with their own unique properties and flavors ranging from sweet or winey to earthy or fruity. We often use miso the same way vegetable broth is used—to give soups, stews, and gravies an intriguing backdrop. The recipes in this book use either white (or sweet) miso, which is a blond sort of color and has a mild, slightly sweet flavor, or brown rice miso, which is rich and full bodied. Store miso in an airtight container.

Nondairy milk: Use whatever kind floats your boat, be it soy, rice, almond—even hazelnut, and more recently coconut-based milk beverages. As long as it's not an overly sweetened or flavored milk, you can use any of these milks interchangeably in all recipes.

Tempeh: A fermented soybean patty or cake. Often made with other grains and beans folded in for more flavor, textures, and nutrition, too. Doesn't sound all that appealing, now does it? But, trust us, when treated right—and the Veganomicon will make sure that you do treat it right—tempeh is a succulent and welcome addition to your diet. Isa's mom swears by it.

Tofu: Some people like to pronounce it toFU, we think in an effort to make it sound bad. Well, nice try, haters, tofu is here to stay! For Veganomicon purposes we suggest keeping on hand a block or two of refrigerated water packed (a.k.a. Chinese style) firm and extra-firm tofu for savory recipes, and a few packs of shelf-stable silken (Japanese style) firm and soft tofu for desserts.

Vegan mayo: