Rating: - Dependably, delightfully delectable!
Cooking from this cookbook has been a delight. My girlfriend and I have cooked perhaps ten recipes from the pages of this Vegan gem. I can say comfortably that none of the recipes we've cooked are anything less than extremely tasty.
Ingredients can tend towards being expensive; the stroganoff we cooked last night, for instance, would have called for $24 worth of dried porcini mushrooms if we'd followed the recipe exactly. Recipes are not necessarily written for the beginning cook, but are not horribly complicated and have all yielded good results without much deviation from the original recipe.
This is a cookbook that I have recommended to non-Vegans as a way to demonstrate that Vegan food is no less delicious than any other.
Rating: - Best cookbook!
A couple of years ago my grandmother took me to lunch at Candle 79 and we loved it so much she bought me the cookbook. It is hands down the best cookbook I have ever had! I have made over half the recipes in it and they all come out incredible! I am a vegetarian and my husband is not-- the recipes are very adaptable to making things non-vegan or even non-vegetarian if you like. (I prefer to keep them vegan though). Unlike other vegan cookbooks, most of the recipes are quite easy to make and you don't have to go on a treasure hunt to find most of the ingredients. I strongly recommend it and hope they come out with another one! Definitely try the ginger-miso stir fry, the lentil chowder, and the summer minestrone soup.
The only concern some might have with it is some of the measurements are off, for example the mushroom barely soup calls for 1 and a half tablespoons of salt, when it clearly should be teaspoons. This is not a detraction for me, when something does not make sense, I alter it, and I also tend to like things rather spicy so I double the spices a lot. This cookbook is probably best for people comfortable with vegetarian cooking and those who don't mine making modifications.
Rating: - Great Restaurant, Good Book
So far all of the recipes I have tried have been great. The eggplant dish from the Indian Plate is delicious. I have seen some negative reviews on the chocolate macadamian nut cookies but I think people forgot the 2 tablespoons of egg replacer needs to be added to 4 tablespoons of warm water prior to adding it. I made the cookies the weekend and they were great. Hope this helps, you should give th ecookies a second chance. I am giving this book 4 stars because I agree the directions could be a little more clear.
Rating: - Recipe error
Something is very wrong with the Chocolate Macademia Nut Cookie recipe on p. 191. There is not enough liquid in the recipe and the cookie dough looks like sand. I added soy milk (~1/2-3/4 cup) till it resembled cookie dough, but the cookies came out a bit cakey. From reading others' reviews, I guess there are other errors as well. I'm sure the restaurant is great but the cookbook is disappointing because you don't know which recipes will turn out right.
Rating: - very hit or miss
Some recipes are great, but some are so awful, it seems they were never tested. I really think they failed to edit the book properly. The chocolate macadamia nut cookies, for example, simply don't work. There's not enough liquid, as though an ingredient were missing. At the restaurant, I asked a chef, who said, "just use a food processor to mix it." Obviously, that didn't solve the problem. And recipes repeatedly say to whisk margarine, which is nearly impossible, even if it's at room temperature. Just use an electric mixer! Also, calling for 1/4 tablespoon is absurd--they should know measuring spoons don't come like that--just say 3/4 teaspoon! Stupid errors like this shouldn't be present in a cookbook from such nice restaurant. Still, some recipes, like the cobb salad, are delicious, which is why I give it 3 stars.