Make your own pantry staples from the Queen of Vegan Cheese

I had the pleasure of hosting Miyoko Schinner at our home a couple of years ago. She was in town for a vegan festival and her accommodations fell through. It was a delight to host her, as she is lovely inside and out. At that time she was working on recipes for this book: The Homemade Vegan Pantry: The Art of Making Your Own Staples . So I’m excited to review it today, especially after I loved her Artisan Vegan Cheese.



Layout and design:

The book is organized into the following chapters: condiments, dairy- and egg-free goodness, all you need is soup, the meat of the argument, magic and pasta, the grains of truth, and sweet endings. The layout and fonts are good and reasonably easy to read (regular readers know I have an issue with the common use of sans serif fonts in body copy). There’s plenty of white space to write notes in.



Photography:

Full-color photographs by Eva Kolenko are sprinkled throughout the book, giving you the feeling you are in the author’s kitchen with her.

Recipes:

Recipes include three types of mayo, multiple sauces and salad dressings, fig and lavender jam, almond “feta,” several types of stock and soup concentrates, unfish sticks, unpork, unribs, three kinds of pasta and several sauces, waffle mix, crackers, and two kinds of pizza dough, lemon curd, oat gelato, and caramel sauce. I’m guessing roughly half of the recipes in the book are gluten-free or could be made gluten-free by using wheat-free tamari, GF nutritional yeast, etc. The meat substitutes all contain some type of wheat that could not be subbed out.

What I liked about the book:

Clean layout, clear instructions. I believe her experience with these recipes, many of which she’s been making for years and years.

I wasn’t so keen on:

Recipes were not coded for special diets; nutritional analysis is not provided, which would be helpful for low-sodium eaters.

Recommended for:

vegans, vegetarians, home cooks who like to make things from scratch

Not recommended for:

Migraine, celiac/gluten-free (see notes above), paleo, soy-free, or low-sodium diets

A note about my cookbook reviews: In the past, I tested at least three recipes from each book, took photos, and described my experience. Due to my dietary limitations (extremely-low-sodium for my Meniere’s Disease and trigger-free foods for migraine relief), it is no longer possible for me to test the recipes and do them justice.

Required FTC disclosure: I received one copy of this book from the publisher for the giveaway on September 24th, 2015.

Here’s the book if you want to see more:

