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This Vegan Cookbook Is Quietly Revolutionary
Miyoko Schinner’s ‘Homemade Vegan Pantry’ is a new classic, teaching valuable and delicious lessons towards self-sufficiency
One major argument against vegan cuisine has been its reliance on processed foods: jarred mayonnaise, soy cheeses, artificially thickened nut milks. If home and restaurant chefs alike were not able or willing to make these staples in their kitchens, then how could vegan food be taken seriously? How could it achieve the heights of traditional cooking if staples were always coming from a factory?
And that’s why The Homemade Vegan Pantry: The Art of Making Your Own Staples by Miyoko Schinner (maker of now-famed cheeses and butters), which came out in 2015, was and continues to be a breath of fresh air. As Isa Chandra Moskowitz writes in the foreword, “Every single herb and spice is vegan. It might seem a silly thing to say, but it comes in handy to remember when so often we’re told that vegan food is limiting.” Schinner uses every vegan ingredient — which is most of the edible matter in the world — to great effect, with ease.
Schinner is a great fan of French cuisine, which is notoriously reliant on animal products, from eggs to butter to other fats. Thankfully, she brings her studied cook’s eye to problems that…
