The 30-Minute Vegan - Mark Reinfeld [1]
The authors, Mark Reinfeld and Jennifer Murray, know that I’m not a vegan and probably you should know that, too. Although butter and cheese find their way into my vegetarian cookbooks and my kitchen, quite a few of my recipes are vegan, too, simply because many dishes I love happen to be so. Traditional, largely plant-based food cultures are full of dishes that today could be called “vegan,” and they are the dishes I turned to when I opened Greens restaurant in 1979. Like our vegetarian dishes, they were greeted with enthusiasm, not because they were lacking dairy, but because they tasted good and were familiar to our mostly nonvegetarian customers. (Who didn’t know pesto?) Looking back to that time, it would have been difficult to imagine a vegan menu, or a book like The 30-Minute Vegan, which often overlooks traditional flavors in favor of a more carefree blend of elements and ingredients. But I’m open to being open, and I’m delighted to have Mark and Jennifer’s book in hand. It’s introduced me to some new dishes and although I may never be a full-time vegan—I did grow up on a small dairy farm, after all, and cream is in my veins—I can certainly appreciate recipes that sidestep some ingredients we may well benefit from setting aside at least from time to time, while retaining flavor and appeal.
What I especially appreciate in The 30-Minute Vegan is the effort Mark and Jennifer make to woo, albeit gently, the reader away from highly processed convenience foods even if they are vegan, toward foods that are whole, fresh, and minimally processed, which means, one really does need to do some cooking. Although they live and cook in Hawaii, The 30-Minute Vegan is not too Hawaii based, which makes it ultimately practical for the home cook who happens to live on the mainland. Add to these virtues the knowledge that you’re not going to be spending all day in the kitchen and you have a very useful book, indeed. Because Mark and Jennifer are so committed to helping you put real food on the table in a half hour or less, they provide various tips and tricks, including encouraging readers to hone their knife skills, which is good advice for anyone, but especially for people who haven’t spent much time in the kitchen. They also know that if you aren’t linear about how you think of cooking and organize yourself, you can accomplish a lot more quickly—more good advice and the kind that’s often lacking in thirty-minute cookbooks.
This practical book is also a friendly one. “Use what you have and what you love,” the authors advise if you can’t find a particular ingredient—a relief for many, I’m sure. And although vegan food may be different from mainstream food, who says that vegans don’t want to have some egg(less) nog during the holidays, a chocolate-covered strawberry now and then, or lemon bars? . . . They do, and even if they’re not quite like what the rest of us are familiar with, the authors are generous in their offering of vegan approaches to familiar dishes such as corn on the cob, pizzas and pastas, BBQ sauce (for tempeh), polenta, as well as desserts.
For me as a cook, the goal of any cuisine, especially one that omits culturally mainstream ingredients, like animal products, is to come up with food that is delicious and a joy to eat. My favorite comment from customers at Greens was, “Oh, I forgot that there wasn’t any meat.” You want your eater, even if it’s just you, to come away from a meal having forgotten all about those missing ingredients. It’s not enough to exclude the shunned ingredient—that’s only going partway. The food has to sing, too.
So I especially appreciate that The 30-Minute Vegan emphasizes building blocks for flavor, such as herb-infused oils, and even the uses of herbs, so important and so often ignored. That there’s an emphasis on food that’s fresh, local, seasonal, and organic speaks, not only to our concerns about the environment, but again to the quality of the foods we cook. If you want to cook simply and well, you’ll