Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook

"Veganomicon came out in 2007. Isa Chandra Moscowitz had already put out a vegan cookbook called Vegan With a Vengeance that was really cool, personality-driven, really rooted in her punk aesthetic and upbringing. That’s how she came to veganism and how she came to cooking as well. She was cooking for bands who came to stay in her house on their way through Brooklyn. And she had to make them vegan food. Veganomicon , which she wrote with Terry Hope Romero, is The Joy of Cooking for vegan cooking because it gives you so much insight not just into fun recipes that are going to be easy for you, but also into technique, and how to bring these different proteins—tofu, tempeh, seitan—into your life. It has a lot of really great tips that will teach you how to do things like use saffron, sprouts, a baking sheet. It’s very much a beginner cookbook, but a lot of people can learn from it. It’s not big on pictures, it’s big on text. Isa Chandra Moscowitz, from Vegan with a Vengeance to now, has said that it’s knowing how to cook that’s the important thing for being vegan. So she really drills down into the importance of knowing how to cook from scratch, having knife skills, having some basic understanding of technique, and that’s why she’s really changed the game with Vegan with a Vengeance , with Veganomicon , and brought people more to an understanding of veganism as a culinary approach, rather than just an ideology."