Green book review - Vegan Secret Supper: Bold & Elegant Menus from a Rogue Kitchen by Merida Anderson

A vegan dining club? Yes, it does really exists and it is run by chef Merida Anderson in Vancouver  Montreal and New York, where she proves that sophisticated dinner parties can be fun, tasty and vegan too! Don't believe it? Have a look at her book "Vegan Secret Supper", which is the green book we review this week!

Vegan Secret Supper: Bold & Elegant Menus from a Rogue Kitchen by Merida Anderson (publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press)

What this book is about?
The art of the convivial, joyful meal shared with friends and family has evolved in recent years. The growing popularity of dinner clubs and themed potlucks attest to our desire for get-togethers at home that are out of the ordinary; also, temporary pop-ups and secret supper locales (where the address is often kept under wraps) are redefining the notion of the traditional restaurant meal. But where do vegans fit into all this fun for foodies?

Vegan Secret Supper is a collection of imaginative, delectable, animal-free recipes by chef Mérida Anderson of VSS (Vegan Secret Supper), a dining club that she has run in Vancouver, Montreal, and New York. At VSS, Mérida creates amazing vegan dishes that prove that sophisticated, spectacular dinner parties do not require the use of animal products. With her focus on menu-planning and simple, seasonal ingredients, she offers readers all the tools they need to create healthy, sumptuous meals, whether it's a dish for a potluck, a romantic dinner for two, or a celebration for twenty.

Full-color throughout, the book's recipes include split pea bisque with minted cream; smoked cauliflower on red quinoa tabouli; walnut and roasted yam croquettes with spicy balsamic beet reduction; and chocolate blackberry cashew cheesecake. As well, Mérida offers fantastic tips and insight on how to create your own vegan secret supper club at home. 

About the author: 

Mérida Anderson is a self-taught chef who became vegan at the age of sixteen. She is also a photographer, visual artist, clothing designer, and musician.

Our review:

I take vegan books with a bit of hesitation. They are either really good or really awful. This book, Vegan Secret Supper, I am very pleased to say is one of the really fantastic ones. It is sophisticated and refined. It has plates and recipes for any taste and every taste. It takes into account nutrition as well as the vegan ideology and thankfully is not just tofu and soy.

I really liked that it gives full meals, not just pieces and parts that you then have to put together on your own. Then the author goes on to give helpful plating instructions. This book offers all courses of a meal from the starter to the dessert and everything in between. The handmade ice cream recipes with instructions of ‘how-to’ without using an ice cream maker, not only work, but work well to produce a wonderful variety of ice creams. I was very pleased with the outcome.

I am happily making my way recipe by recipe and page by page through this book. The author has a way of instruction that is easy to understand and then implement. I will add that if you are looking for a quick meal, this book may not be for you. Although most can be made up rather quickly, it does take a bit more time and planning than pre-processed food.

I highly, and definitely recommend this book. Even the carnivores in my house have found enjoyment from the dishes within.

You can purchase the book on Amazon.com.

Yours,

Raz @ Eco-Libris
Plant a tree for every book you read!

100 green apps - VeganYumYum Mobile

We are creating a list of the top 100 apps that will help you go green as part of our effort to promote a more sustainable lifestyle. Apps become an integral part of our life and a valuable tool and we believe we should also take advantage of them when it comes go greening up our life.

Every week we bring you a new app from the 100 green apps list, and today we're happy to introduce an app with great vegan recipes.

Our app is VeganYumYum Mobile from VeganYumYum. This app is for iPhone and iPad and is free.






















Here are more details about VeganYumYum App:

VeganYumYum Mobile lets you search, view, and organize all your favorite recipes from the award-winning food blog, VeganYumYum.com.

Here you can see VeganYumYum on Martha Stewart:



You can check top 100 green apps at http://www.ecolibris.net/greenapps.asp. As you'll see, this list is in work, but we promise to update it every week until we'll have all 100 green apps.

Last week's green app - inBloom.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

Green Options: Six Cookbooks For A Better-Eating Kitchen

As part of Eco-Libris' ongoing content partnership with Green Options Media, we feature a post that was originally published by Kelli Best-Oliver on September 23 on Eat.Drink.Better. Today's post includes recommendations on great cookbooks for everyone - vegan, vegetarian and even carnivores.

Word on the street is that as the economy worsens, cookbook sales rise. Isn’t that American? Wouldn’t one think that cookbook check-outs at the library might go up instead? Perhaps it has. Chosen method of procurement aside, I’m not begrudging you the investment in a superior culinary tome–I spent too much time looking at one yesterday, although I was able to walk away without a purchase. But I also already have a good library of cookbooks at my disposal that I’ve picked up over the years that allow me to cook great meals, from whole foods, in my own kitchen. If you’re a fledgling home cook, or just someone looking to eat at home more to save a little money, here’s a list of comprehensive cookbooks, vegan, vegetarian, and meat-eater, that have proved themselves to me time and time again.

1. Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything or How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Bittman champions the idea that anyone can cook and cook well, and these volumes are infamous for their ability to empower people to do so. Both of these must-haves contain over 1,500 recipes that build a basic repertoire of skills and dishes. If you can master Bittman (and he thinks you can!) you can easily move on to more difficult recipes.

2. Vegan With A Vengeance or Veganomicon. If you keep an animal-free kitchen, or are just looking for delicious vegan meals to prepare on occasion, these books by Isa Chandra Moskowitz (the latter co-authored by Terry Hope Romero) are a great start to cooking really, really tasty food that makes you forget about meat. The ladies behind Post Punk Kitchen focus on what you can eat, not what you’re missing, and the results are fantastic. They make vegan accessable and tasty.

3. Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. Deborah Madison knows how to write clear and simple directions for really, really good food. I thumbed through VCfE this morning to find a tasty soup recipe (I went with summer tomato with shallot, by the way). The book is beautiful, packed full of tips, tricks, and skills, and will leave you knowing how to manipulate vegetables into any kind of dish you could want. She’s also my go-to for classic baking recipes, because of baking’s precise nature and her ability to write clear directions, I feel less inclined towards disaster.

4. Simply In Season. By Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert, this cookbook my mom picked up for me in Door County is organized by season, you’re always cooking with what’s fresh and available. With plenty of meatfree dishes (and suggestions for modification for meat-based ones), this is good for most kitchens. The reason why I love it the most is that Lind and Hockman-Wert don’t make me dread that stretch of winter where fresh, local produce is few and far between. We can still eat well and try to eat local.

5. The Moosewood Series has reputation for being on the…crunchier side, but Mollie Katzen and the Moosewood Collective always put forth a variety of recipes from their restaurant that people love, and I’m no different. My favorite is Moosewood Restaurant New Classics, which I cook from all the time for quick and simple veggie classic dishes.

6. The Silver Spoon. Known as the Italian cooking bible,this book is hefty–with over 2,000 recipes organized by ingredients. This is real Italian cooking, and although sometimes information is lost in translation (seriously, read through everything first to make sure it makes sense, because there are a few glaring typos) if you love the varied cuisine of Italy (as we do in our Italian-roots household), you will love this book. For me, The Silver Spoon represents moving away from American cuisine and moving towards cooking methods of the world.

Check out other cookbook reviews on Green Options below.

Readers: What cookbook would your kitchen be incomplete without?

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