Product Description

The 84 extraordinary recipes, representing cuisines from around the planet, feature flavor-filled dishes both original and from the world s great chefs. You ll find cooking for every occasion, from easy, everyday meals to festive, elegant dining. The Best of Vegan Cooking is a cornucopia for all seasons soups . . . salads . . . pastas . . . vegetables and side dishes . . . breads and muffins . . . desserts . . . with special sections on delicious ice creams and sorbets and classic risottos.

Beautifully illustrated with 17 fullcolor photographs! It s a perfect gift that will be treasured along with its predecessor, Dining With Friends: The Art of North American Vegan Cuisine.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14999 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• 128 pages

Review

THE BEST OF VEGAN COOKING is more than just a title; it s a fact. Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral s sequel to 2005 s excellent Dining With Friends could be subtitled Recipes From Friends.

Where her first effort focused on North American fare, Cooking takes on new territory with 84 recipes that represent cuisines from around the globe. A number of which are donated from renowned chefs.

Try this menu on for size: Manhattan Vegetable Chowder (Trish Sebben-Kruka), Himalayan Red Rice Salad with Cranberries (Jesus Gonzales), Spicy Barbecued Tofu Triangles (Bryant Terry), Baby Artichokes Provençal Style (Mark Bittman), and leave room for Charlie Trotter s Mignardises (Chocolate Truffles).

Also included are chapters on Pasta, Risotto (including gluten-free recipes), and Pancakes, Breads, and Muffins.

It s rounded out with Grade-A photos from both Linda Long (Great Chefs Cook Vegan) and well as Feral s daughter.

The Best of Vegan Cooking is a stellar effort, broad in scope, compact in size, and user-friendly. It s a perfect book to with both vegan and non-vegan friends. --VegNews Sept/Oct 2009 p. 84

COOKING WITH A CONSCIENCE

Offers an inspiring and mouthwatering glimpse into the remarkable diversity and elegance of plant-based cuisine, and into the future of food on this planet. This cookbook gracefully celebrates the emerging glory of vegan cuisine a cuisine that is proving that kindness and awareness are also tasty and healthy. -- Will Tuttle, Ph.D., author, The World Peace Diet

Destined to become a classic. But I hope it will become a series. Priscilla Feral and Friends of Animals vision brings a community together to create a book that is more than the sum of its parts! Added between the lines is pure passion for plant-based ingredients. -- Linda Long, author, Great Chefs Cook Vegan

When you feel good, life is a lot easier, and the vegan food in this book makes you feel great.

-- Bart Potenza and Joy Pierson, Candle 79 and Candle Café, New York City ---- Bart Potenza and Joy Pierson, Candle 79 and Candle Café, New York City

Friends of Animals president authors vegan cookbook

By Kate Marcal

Even after publishing her second cookbook, Priscilla Feral still doesn't consider herself a chef.

"That word is overused and it should be saved for professionals," she said. "I'm a cook. My family's had several generations of women who cooked, and now I do too."

Her second cookbook, titled "The Best of Vegan Cooking," was published earlier this year. It contains 83 vegan recipes ranging from herbed couscous to spicy tofu triangles to chocolate pound cake.

"It's an expression of my hobby," Feral said of her latest book.

Feral estimates about 60 percent of the new cookbook's recipes are her own creations.

"What sparks an idea? Usually, it's having something in a restaurant," she said. "I'll get the cook to tell me what the ingredients were. Then I go home and try to replicate it, but I alter the recipes to use only vegan ingredients."

Through trial and error, Feral develops original vegan dishes. "Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't," she said. "I just try to create delicious meals where nothing is sacrificed."

She believes a vegan diet can rival the quality of any cuisine. "They're fabulous meals with high standards," said Feral, whose book includes an entire section devoted to risotto inspired by a recent trip to Italy.

Also important to Feral is the physical presentation of a meal. "The dish should look beautiful as well as taste great," she said. The cookbook includes pictures of prepared dishes taken by Feral's daughter Jane Seymour, a photographer with Shape magazine.

"It's meant to offer ideas," Feral said about her book. "I want to show people alternatives to traditional cooking."

"The Best of Vegan Cooking" also contains recipes for soups, appetizers, vegetables, pasta, pastries, and desserts. They use materials like flax, tapioca flour, vegetable oil, and egg substitutes to ensure that no animal products are needed.

"I tell people to go vegan mainly for their own health," said Feral. "But it also benefits the earth and it avoids unnecessary slaughter."

According to Feral, the best way for people to explore veganism is to experiment in their own homes.

"What you see around here are people with to-die-for kitchens, but they still don't cook very much," she said. "Kids are getting a lot of take-out and catering because their parents are busy. People say that their kids don't like vegetables, but you can't feed your kids frozen cauliflower and expect them to like vegetables."

She also advises parents to avoid packaged snacks. "It's just not healthy and it's not good for the environment," she said.

Instead, Feral recommends shopping at organic grocery stores and farmers' markets for natural, locally-grown produce. "There are excellent places in the area," she said. "We live in a privileged culture where the natural resources are available to us. Good food doesn't have to have a reliance on animal products. We can opt out of using them."

Ultimately, Feral hopes society's view of animals will change. A vegan since 1992, Feral said, "If I had known more, I would have started earlier." She believes people are largely unaware of the suffering animals endure.

"It doesn't matter how humanely they were raised," she said. "It doesn't matter if they were organically-fed. They all go to the same slaughterhouse."

For people looking to adopt a vegan lifestyle, Feral has one piece of advice: Learn how to cook.

"If you can read, you can cook," she said. "And if you can cook, you can be a happy vegan." --Norwalk Hour -- CT, 06/10/2009

About the Author
As both an avid gardener and a vegan cook, Priscilla Feral nurtures a profound respect for nature and its abundance, the source of these plant-derived recipes. She is the president of Friends of Animals and the co-author of Dining With Friends: The Art of North American Vegan Cuisine. Priscilla once designed chocolate recipes for Godiva, and her sense of craft has now produced vegan recipes that have appeared in The New York Times, among many other publications. A resident of Connecticut, Priscilla enjoys nature walks, and as an advocate for animals, seeks to preserve their right to live life on their own terms.

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Customer Reviews

Beautiful!!!
This cookbook is absolutely beautiful from cover to cover. It is full of wonderful recipes and gorgeous photos. I ordinarily don't like potato salad, but the aioli potato salad recipe in this book is out of this world. The quinoa and pine nuts side dish is simple and provides a tasty return far in excess of the effort required. The third item I'll rave about is the broccoli/rice salad with sesame ginger dressing. Absolutely wonderful. I can't wait to try more recipes from this one -- it's a gem! Buy this and Dining With Friends and you'll be set!

Good value
I realize that folks can pull vegan recipes off of the 'net for free, but my experience is that you usually get what you pay for. Buying cookbooks is not standard operating procedure for me, but this one came highly recommended. And what a treat it is! With this new addition to the growing canon of vegan cuisine, you get exquisite and beautiful recipes that you just won't find anywhere else.

Listen to the title of this recipe: Himalayan Red Rice Salad with Cranberries. The words alone are delicious. This is a classy and classic dish that I can't seem to get enough of. You will impress people at a potluck with this one. (I also recommend serving it from a dark purple serving bowl, if you have one.)

I also suggest Aunt Trish's Pasta e Fagioli (hearty and healthy), the Sweet Potato Salad with Crystallized Ginger (mmmmm...), and the Butternut Squash Soup (so, so tasty).

But what I'm most excited about are the sorbet recipes. (I ate sorbet in obnoxious quantities last summer.) Here's another gorgeous title: Blueberry-Pomegranate Sorbet. A beautiful picture of this is on the front cover. I plan to dig into these once the weather warms a bit.

Baby Artichokes provencal style -- Yummy!
As a long time Vegan and sometimes cook, I am very impressed with "The Best of Vegan Cooking" by Priscilla Feral/President of Friends of Animals. The book is especially inviting with its beautiful photos of the delectable recipes both on the cover and throughout the book. These recipes are a mix of Priscilla Feral's and outstanding chefs from around the world.

The recipes look so delicious, easy to make and healthy that several of us are planning a pot luck - making recipes from this book and sharing them. And of course we would have to complement it with some of the wine pictured on the back cover.

I brought the book to my office and shared it with my non vegan friends who liked it very much and made copies of many of the recipes. One friend, Anna, told me that she would eat "everything in the book." She said the recipes are healthy, hearty and look easy to make for her and her (finicky) husband who wants "hearty". They also resonate with her Italian heritage. Anna's favorites are Farfalle with Broccoli Rabe; Pasta with Basil Pesto and Linguine with Raw Nut Pesto and Tomato Sauce. Anna was also impressed that many of the recipes do not contain soy since she is allergic.

I love the Baby Artichokes Provencal style - would be great with pasta. The deserts also look tempting - the yummy Kiwi Parfait or the Chocolate pudding with berries. ( I am a berry addict) Oh - there is also home made ice cream - Vanilla mint chocolate chip - vegan of course.

Bottom line, the great thing about this book is that the recipes are cruelty free. At the risk of sounding like a preacher, I am vegan because of the animals - because no animal has to die for us to eat happily and healthfully. As the inside of the book states - veganism is a way of life - in harmony with the planet.

bon appetit, - and joyful eating to you.