The Homemade Vegan Pantry: the Art of Making Your Own Staples. / Miyoko Schinner, 2015. Photography by Eva Kolenko. Published by Ten Speed Press. 223 pages. Color illustrations.
I wanted to see this book before I even knew of its existence! Every vegan and vegetarian wants the know-how to create staples for their kitchen. Miyoko Schinner’s Homemade Vegan Pantry has done the hard parts for us, creating staples that range from 2 ingredients (easy) to lots-of-technique-needed (sausages, omelets and frittatas). Her recipes will have you proud to say that everything on your table was made from scratch—everything—even the Italian unsausages, biscuits, loaf bread, Aioli, fig and lavender jam (just one of many jams), chocolate cake and more I haven’t mentioned here.
My first rule in cooking has always been to eat only what you can make in your kitchen.
—The Homemade Vegan Pantry page 19
Classically-trained in French cuisine, Miyoko Schinner is a top vegan chef, owner of Miyoko’s Kitchen brand of vegan cheeses, and author of three books in addition to The Homemade Vegan Pantry.
Items like dairy-free milks, creams, cheeses and sauces are just the beginning of your expertise with vegan staples. First, because it’s so cool to craft them yourself! But also, you can save so much by using recipes to create your own—instead of running around, agonizing over product labels for inclusion of the “wrong”, and/or unpronounceable ingredients for your diet. With Miyoko’s skill at your back, how about adding the variety and pizazz of waffle and cake batters, stocks and bouillon, un-burgers, snack bars, vegan fish sauce, jams and cookies to your larder?
One of the first recipes I tried with expected success was “Creamy No-Oil Caesar Dressing” for salads, cut raw vegetables, etc. The Caesar taste is really what you’ve got here after you’ve achieved the creamy, slightly thick sauce of this recipe. You’ll get it with almond meal and nutritional yeast, flavorings and soft tofu.
What really excites me besides cake and waffle batters (because baking vegan is always an issue—how fluffy will the result be? What about the mouth-feel? Etc.), are recipes for stock and bouillon. Because adding soup to your meal, you create multiple-courses—ooh la-la!
Miyoko’s Soup Concentrates, See-Food (seafood, vegan style) and No-Beef Stocks are impressive. How often do I reach for a pre-packaged bouillon or soup when I could make my own! Lacking an industrially-processed taste, my soup would likely be delicious and have ‘way more nutritious value.
Try making tofu from scratch (it’s not difficult), vegan sausages, vegan crabcakes! Some of Miyoko’s gem recipes require extra ingredients you might not have on hand, such as fermented tofu or varieties of mushrooms or seaweeds. For Vegan Fish Sauce, you’ll need fermented tofu and wakame (a sea vegetable) granules; for a white cake mix you’ll need flour, sugar, almond meal, flax seeds; for homemade soy milk without the beany flavor, you’ll need soybeans and water.
Although lots of the recipes utilize tofu, others rely on cashews or almonds and their milks, with a few recipes calling for coconut milk. Miyoko is enthusiastic about soy. Her confidence in simple approaches to delicious food is contagious. You’ll finish scanning the book inspired to whip together a selection of creamers, sauces and dressings for the upcoming week—if you can keep them around that long!
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