Product Description

The Asian Vegan Kitchen is a collection of recipes from across Asia, featuring the spices and the many tasty ingredients that have made these cuisines popular world-wide. It caters to the growing segment of people of all ages who have chosen to eschew animal products, yet still want to add some global spice and excitement to their diet.
There is one big difference between this and many other vegan cookbooks. These dishes do not use replacement ingredients for traditional recipes. Instead, author Hema Parekh - a noted teacher of vegetarian cooking styles in Tokyo - has selected recipes that were traditionally vegetarian, and have been enjoyed by diners for decades, even centuries. In doing so, she has had to make only minor changes, if any, for these recipes to be deliciously appealing to everyone: vegan, vegetarian or otherwise.
Over 200 dishes have been selected to cover a wide variety of tastes. Here readers will find vegan-ready recipes for everything from Japanss sushi to northern Indian curries, from Vietnamese spring rolls, to red-hot tofu, Chinese-style. Soups, noodle dishes and some desserts are also included.
The recipes are simple, with detailed explanations. Also included are over 50 mouth-watering photos and a comprehensive glossary.
Vegan cooking just became a lot more interesting.
A long-time vegetarian, Hema Parekh has been teaching vegetarian cooking in Tokyo for almost twenty years. She has written two popular books on vegetarian cooking in Japanese A Touch of Spice and Indian Vegetarian Cooking and is working on a third.
Parekh has lived in Japan for 27 years.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #162606 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Because tofu and other vegan mainstays are part of their larders, and since they tend to be dairy-free by design, Asian cuisines lend themselves naturally to vegan cooking, and this handy cookbook does a beautiful job compiling attractive, tasty and uncomplicated vegan recipes from India to China and beyond. Take Japan's Simmered Mixed Vegetables, a deceptively straightforward preparation made complex with a sauce of soy, sake and dashi, a kelp-based stock that's the Japanese equivalent of chicken broth; exotic vegetables, including taro and lotus root, come alive in the salty-sweet braising liquid. Thailand's Sweet Corn Cakes are another example of simple-on-the-outside, intricate-on-the-inside vegan cookery, an addictive spin on traditional corn fritters spiced with ginger, garlic and coriander, and served alongside chili sauce and cucumber relish. Unfortunately, the cookbook is a bit confusing; the recipes are separated by country rather than, say, main ingredient, and the fine, full-color photographs of the dishes are all crammed in the middle of the book. Though cooks may spend extra time searching for ways to use up surplus zucchini, it's an appealing browse full of tasty diversions.
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From Booklist
Chef-author India-born Parekh, now headquartered in Tokyo, learned to cook defensively upon her marriage, after enjoying a Jain childhood of vegetables, lentils, and pulses. She selects the best, most familiar and comforting dishes (200 of them) from eight Asian countries; readers will recognize such favorites as Indonesia’s nasi goring, Korean kimchi (in many varieties), China’s Kung Pao in vegetarian mode, and the well-loved naan and chapati breads of India. Instructions, although relatively brief, are highly reliant on other recipes, like spices, sauces, stocks, and condiments (for instance, tofu mayonnaise, spicy soy-vinegar sauce, and Vietnamese vegetarian stock). Many also demand ingredients not easily found outside major U.S. metropolitan areas—tamarind juice and coriander roots with stems, to name two. Yet gourmet adventures beckon; it’s hard to resist preparing different kinds of meals after seeing a centerfold full of glorious after color photographs. --Barbara Jacobs

Review

If your concept of international vegetarian cooking is limited to eggplant parm from Italy and bean burritos from Mexico, take a world tour with Hema Parekh, author of the new book, The Asian Vegan KitchenParekh's philosophy is all about cooking as a way to share love and demonstrate hospitality. New York Daily News
"... wide variety of innovative dishes... Beautiful color photos." Vegetarian Journal

Customer Reviews

The Asian Vegan Kitchen
This book has a lot of great recipes in it and I found it quite inspiring. There a limited photos which are all contained in the middle of the book. My only issue with the book was that despite the fact that I have a very diverse collection of spices and herbs, she seemed to come up with things I did not have. So it is up to you to decide if it is worth the effort to track down some odd ingredient if you want to follow the recipes exact.

If you like asian cuisine, you will love this book!
This book does have some ingredients that you may need to go to a special market to buy. And the recipes are somewhat involved, but they're so authentic. The bonus is that once you take the time and make these recipes, they will taste just like they do at the restaurant. Delicious!

way too simplified
I guess the book was geared to people who want to dabble in asian vegan cooking because more than half the recipes it contains are so basic they are found in any other websites. However, this book lacks key steps that the basic cook might need. I think the author's approach to many traditional recipes are extremely simplified and lack authentic ingredients and techniques that are crucial to the many subtle characters of nearly all asian dishes.

I tried Hobak john(mushroom and squash fritters) today but my Korean friend said it was not authentic at all. I also tried Chivashi zushi(scattered sushi) and it was a disaster. Her recipe calls for 4 cups white rice, which serves at least 10 (not 4)!

The index of this book is wrong a lot of the times, plus there is a glossary at the back, but the information tends to be scanty.
"Urad dal--Also known as black gram, or black lentils. Ural dal is black." Okay I understand they're black but so what?

One more thing; This book surely lacks pictures. How do you know what it should look like, or if it even appears appetizing? I need photos in my recipe books.