Customer Reviews

Easy Vegan Cooking: Over 350 Delicious Recipes for Every Occasion

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Doesn't the moist chocolate cake on the cover look delicious? Don't you wish you knew how to make a wonderful vegan chocolate cake that was moist and rich? Well, I'm sorry to say, you won't learn it from this book. Although, the book is full of new ways to prepare old favorites, if you are an American, the European terms, serving sizes and flavor combinations may be a bit of a turn-off. However, if you are the adventurous type, you may welcome the new taste experience. Just, do yourself a favor, and stay away from the chocolate cake.

I am a vegan and I've really enjoyed the dishes in this book. The only problem I have with it is that there are few dishes omnivores would appreciate. When you become a vegan, your taste changes somewhat and more foods become appealling. Those trying to use the ideas in this book to cook for nonvegans may need to make some changes to make the dishes enjoyable for those with more limited culinary experiences.

This was one of the first vegan cookbooks I ever bought, and I thought it was a great starter cookbook. I found the recipes REALLY simple and approachable, given that I had almost no cooking experience at that time. Recipes generally have between 2 and 5 steps, clearly laid out in list format as 1), 2), 3), etc., and the steps are really simple and non-threatening for novice cooks (e.g. "Chop the mushrooms finely. Saute in the oil until tender" is a typical step). I generally liked everything I made, my two favorite recipes being the Macaroni, Mushroom, and Tofu Casserole and the Spicy Tofu Scramble with Red Pepper and Tomato.

I would agree with other reviewers that this isn't the best cookbook if you're going to be cooking for non-vegans, and I'd like to point out that when recipes call for "Nutritional Yeast" they are definitely not not NOT (as suggested by another reviewer) calling for Vegemite, which yes, is totally disgusting to most people (including me!), but actual Nutritional Yeast, such as that made by Red Star and sold on Amazon <ASIN: B000197GMA>.

All that said, I'd agree that there are better vegan cookbooks on the market, particularly if you have any cooking experience. I would recommend this cookbook, but only as a supplement to one of the better, more comprehensive vegan cookbooks such as Robin Robertson's Vegan Planet or Sarah Kramer's How It All Vegan, or Isa Moskowitz's Vegan With a Vengence.

Bottom line: This cookbook gave me cooking confidence as a new, transitioning vegan, but I've moved on to better cookbooks and rarely look back.

I'm reviewing the second edition.

This is a nicely presented book. Quantities are all given in the various different measurement systems and the author includes multiple names for ingredients when they have them.

I wouldn't really class this as "easy" though. Some of the ingredients are hard to find where live and are probably hard to find outside of Britain (tinned pease pudding, for example) though this is forgivable as recipes calling for obscure or specifically Brittish ingredients are kept to a minimum. But the layout isn't really very easy to follow either. Sometimes 5 or more steps are combined into one. And I would have liked some pictures of finnished products.

There are some unusual recipes in this book. I haven't been game to try the banana and spaghetti curry, for example. Or the plums with avocado topping, or many of the recipes calling for avocado. But of the recipes I've tried most have turned out well (even if somewhat deviated from the instructions).

I have been a vegan for about a little year now and this one has been a great go to! Although some of the ingredients may be harder to find they're still really good as it pushes the boundaries of the same seven variations most American palates are used to!

My title says it all. It calls for meat and cheese substitues in a lot of recipes which I don't like. I would rather omit those items all together not find alternatives.

I wanted to contact Leah Leneman directly, but find no contact information online. The only three things a recipe book has to get right, ultimately, are the list of ingredients, the amount of each ingredient, and the baking time. The cornbread recipe in this book is wildly wrong about the latter two. It called for about a third as much liquid as it actually needed, and at half an hour in the oven, at 425, it was starting to burn even though the recipe called or an hour at that temp! Who ever heard of baking cornbread for an hour at such a high temp anyway.

Good delivery time. Very good condition. Helpful, basic recipes for a person of the vegan persuasion.

Many of the foods are very bland. Europeans are used to this, but Americans require more flavor in their food. Omnivores will find these foods almost entirely too strange to even consider eating, and several recepies call for either weird combinations or ingredients that are too expensive or too hard to find. "Nutritional Yeast", for example, is sold under the Australian brande Vegemite, and most Americans find it to be disgusting. It is also expensive (I'm Australian,so I like it, but my friends hate it). My advice? This is an imaginative book with many ideas, but don't be afraid to modify. I haven't tried that chocolate cake yet, but since reading the other review, I don't know if I'll be brave enough to!