Mike Desert says:

Rating

First off, the food in this book is amazing. Vegan With a Vengeance was super great, but this is the friggin’ BOMB!

Aside from the incredible food, the product description doesn’t mention that the first part of the book is a great (and funny) read about HOW to cut and prepare different vegetables, how to cook different grains, etc…for someone like me, pretty invaluable stuff. Also cool if you’re getting this for your “weird” vegan kid that is just learning to cook.

Also,, the icons are a big help (an icon tells you if you can make the meal under 45 min -or way less, another icon tells you if you can find everything at your regular Vons-type market, if there’s soy, etc…)

The other review made a comment about the title, which I think is total genius. Then again, I get the HP Lovecraft/Evil Dead reference. What else could you call the “ultimate vegan cookbook” besides the “Veganomicon”??

Not only does this book have great recipes, but it will totally add ideas to your cooking arsenal. After making the “Black Bean Burgers”, I am never buying packaged veggie burgers again!

p.s. do yourself a favor and make the “Leek and Bean Cassoulet with Biscuits”.

Trollhair says:

Rating

This book is wonderful. It is “The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook”!!! Just reading the recipes I could taste it! What is really cool is —the recipes are so easy to fix. It also let’s you know if it is low fat, gluton free, soy free and best of all ….. if it is supermarket friendly. This isn’t the typical vegetarian cookbook. It has recipes for REAL food. They even have a section that tells you “When NOT to Cook Low-Fat!” Can you imagine? I love it.

By the way, Veganomicon are the words Bruce Campbell said in Army of Darkness!

dnk says:

Rating

Vegan with a Vengeance, I think, made a lot of people aware that vegans did not have to sacrifice real and filling food in order to eat ethically. Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World made people understand that we didn’t have to choose between incredible, mouth-popping flavor and baked goods. With Veganomicon, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and her partner in crime Terry Hope Romero have thrown down the gauntlet to not only other vegans but also other cookbook authors. I don’t think I have ever seen any other volume that has so successfully and beautifully combined authentic flavors and innovative- but never fussy- techniques.

I haven’t made everything in this cookbook- I think that undertaking would be something along the lines of Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen- but what I have made has blown me away. First and foremost, Pasta Della California. Oh my God- linguine in a lime, wine and garlic sauce with arugula (I use spinach), broccoli and avocado. First of all, it’s so chockfull of vegetables reading the recipe makes you feel like you’ve gotten your daily requirements of fiber, vitamin A and C. Second of all, avocados in a cooked dish- and it works! I am so in love with this dish I can’t begin to describe it. The best part of it is that it’s so good that my picky three-year-old son even eats it.

While it goes without saying that their tofu ricotta and wheat-free chocolate chip cookies (a recipe flexible enough to withstand the addition of wheat) are incredible, I must mention her Cheezy “Nooch” Sauce. This is just one example of how their use of simple techniques from the realm of traditional cooking (bechamel, anyone?) and a few ultra simple substitions makes for an incredible culinary experience. All vegans who have pined for cheese sauce need to go out and buy this book right now just for this recipe. It is so good and so versatile. I’ve used it at least five times since I bought the cookbook a month and a half ago with pasta and spinach- and it’s delicious. Not only do the picky toddlers like it, but so does the finnicky thirteen-year-old. Enough said.

But possibly my favorite “recipe” of all is the ice cream sandwich and it’s nine variations. This included next to their delicious and fool-proof ice cream recipe. (How fool proof? I was able to make this by swapping out the ice cream make for the blender- that’s how fool proof.) And of course you can, as she even recommends, go grab any old vegan ice cream and any old (usually overpriced) vegan cookie and make these yourself, but I haven’t seen these offerings, combinations or ideas for vegans- or non-vegans- anywhere else.

I’ve got to admit, it is a let down that this cookbook isn’t as beautifully glossy as Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, but the photo spread in the middle is very well-styled and inspirational. I can’t wait to get to the rest of these recipes.

DynomiteWins says:

Rating

I got this book as a gift – although I had it on my wishlist because my husband and I hate vegetables and I was desperately trying to find a delicious way to reduce our meat intake and begin enjoying vegetables like many other adults do.

Yes, many of the recipes are not “healthy” but many are significantly healthier. I very much appreciated the introductory sections on the “How To” of everything – as someone who doesn’t eat too many vegetables in the first place, I had no idea how to cook 1/2 of them. The recipes are clearly written and easy to follow. The writing style is much more like a blog than a complicated book and we’re actually eating meat-free meals on a regular basis now.

Highly recommended – even if you aren’t vegan (oh and the lemon coconut cake is to die for! I never thought a vegan cake could be any good – I was SO wrong.)

Blejowski says:

Rating

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.