Veganomicon_ The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook - Isa Chandra Moskowitz [17]
Sauté: Frying, while stirring occasionally, food in a skillet or pot with the addition of a fat.
Sear: To cook at high heat for a short period of time so that the outside of a food gets browned but the inside doesn’t cook as much.
Slurry: A mixture of liquid and starch (usually flour, cornstarch, arrowroot powder, or tapioca starch) that’s used to thicken soups and stews. The reason for making a slurry is that you can’t add starch to hot things directly or it will clump up. Once the starch has been broken down in the water, it thickens a dish nice and evenly. We use this method a lot, so figured we might as well let you know the proper culinary term.
Sweat: In a heated skillet, partially covering a sautéed food and letting it steam until tender.
Whisk: Quickly stirring a liquid ingredient, or combination of ingredients, to mix and lightly beating in a little air. Usually done with a whisk, but often a dinner fork will do just as nicely.
LOWER-FAT COOKING
First things first: this is not a diet cookbook. We love oils and nuts and avocados. They are essential for making delicious meals out of healthful foods. They are often crucial when cooking vegan, because plant foods are, in general, significantly lower in fat than animal-based foods. Flip through the pages and it will become clear that we’re not shy when it comes to using olive oil or cashews and, of course, we usually leave room for dessert. Second thing: We are no strangers to diets of all kinds. We’ve tried many of them with some success, and some failure, over the years. Now that dozens of studies
have shown that vegans are less likely to be obese and vegan diets bring greater weight loss, one of the more interesting misconceptions about eating vegan is that you’ll be instantly skinny the day after you eschew cheese or bacon. Not so true. We’ve encountered many vegans who struggle with weight issues just as much as their more omnivorous fellow dieters, and we’re not sure of the reason, either. Maybe it’s because making all this delicious food will make you want to eat more of it? Or, it could be people are a little unclear about how to eat healthy if not eating the standard American diet of meat and potatoes. French fries are vegan, right?
Practice Low - Fat Vegan Cooking
Even if you’re perfectly happy with your weight, you might want to trim some of the fat from your diet. It’s been recommended by many heath impresarios and nutritionists that we should up the fiber, vegetables, and protein in our diets and keep the fat in check anyway. This might even be just the kind of cooking you flirt with a few times a week, while leaving the weekends open for occasions of full-fat desserts and fried foods.
Lucky for vegans, not only is cooking with less fat not rocket science, it isn’t even seventh grade biology class. For the most part, the staples of a vegan diet—legumes, grains, vegetables, and fruit—are all naturally low in fat, as are tofu, tempeh, and seitan. The plant foods we eat that do contain significant fat, such as those aforementioned nuts and avocados, can easily be eaten in moderation. So what we need to look at are the preparation methods we use when cooking our foods. And as you’ve probably deduced, we’re talking about oil here.
AVOID NO-FAT COOKING
Way back in the ’80s when people thought that “mousse for hair” was a good idea, fat of all kinds became the cold-war level threat to the country. You couldn’t enter a supermarket without tripping over a fat-free cookie, salad dressing, or tortilla. So like good little dieters, we tried this fat-free business. And yes, while the pounds did come off (temporarily), we were one hell of an angry, cranky bitch the whole time. Now, in this new enlightened century, we’ve learned that some fats, namely high-quality, minimally