The Chinese Vegan Kitchen: More than 225 Meat-free, egg-free, dairy-free dishes from the Culinary Regions of China. / Donna Klein, A Perigree Book Published by the Penguin Group, 2012.
“The Chinese Vegan Kitchen… ” is latest of eight cookbooks by Donna Klein featuring vegan and vegetarian fare. Klein is a creative cook with a flair for variety and detail, noted by the precise instructions of her recipes and the nutritional analysis of each dish.
Most notably for a cookbook, this book does not present its dishes in photographs. Only the cover features one, otherwise there is no visual reference at all! If you don’t know what a dish looks like, but must rely on names and titles, then a vivid imagination and general knowledge about Chinese food are required for success with the recipes. See my review of a great cookbook. Sorting through all the dishes entails a bit of reading and comparing, and yet there is every convenience and shortcut for the modern cook and kitchen. Vegan cooks anxious to produce an authentic taste will be gratified by the possibilities, once enough time is spent with the text.
A certain amount of flexibility regarding ingredients nets you a delicious result. “Chinese Apple Soup” (p. 32) calls for apples, onion, jujube dates, figs and almonds. My pantry had apples, dried pears, figs, and pecans. I added cinnamon sticks just for spice. In China, apples are considered a super food, as are oranges.
Chinese Apple Soup made with apples, dried pears, figs, and pecans.
Be flexible, but guard the spirit of a dish by following the cooking methods explained by the author who lived and worked in Changsha, a city in Hunan province, China. There she learned how to achieve the specific flavor of a hot, spicy kumquat sauce (for example) from her students at a high school where she taught spoken English.
A complete meal for any occasion could be composed from the recipes here: the book is composed of eight chapters featuring appetizers, soups, salads, rice, noodle, main dishes, side dishes, and desserts. An introduction explains the variety of regional culinary styles, ingredients found in the Chinese kitchen; the text is supported with a concise index and metric conversion charts (should an international reader need them).
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