Abrams (2022), 320 pp.

It’s hard to believe I haven’t yet reviewed a book by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, one of the O.G.’s and still-reining queens of vegan cookbookery. She is well represented in my collection (Vegan Cookies Take Over the World, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Vegan with Vengeance, Veganomicon, I Can Cook Vegan). Her latest is this substantial, nicely-sized hardcover, seasoned with her irreverent humor, making it a fun read-through, in addition to a very interesting cook-through.

The book is broken down into Iconic Sandwiches, Salad, Spreads and Cold Stuff, Chick’n Dinners for Weeknights and Weekends, Comforting Beef Stews, Pigs are Friends not Food, Pasta and Noodles, Small Things (Including Wings), Centerpieces and Showstoppers, the Non-Dairy Diaries, and Staples and Condiments. Despite these divisions, what really happens is that there are recipes for several different kinds of make-at-home-meat which appear in recipes across the chapter categories. This can make for a bit of confusing flipping back-and-forth and a substantial extra time commitment to a recipe. Notably, though, there are also plenty of options which do not include prepared fake meat, but rather other ingredients which can stand in for the dead stuff such as tempeh, jackfruit, portobellos, and lentils. As such, this is a wide-ranging and a very ambitious book, and I will likely make several more things in it (such as the fake tuna steaks and fake fried eggs) before moving on, but I have learned enough about it to get this review to you.

The first fake meat I made was Beefy Seitan. For the uninitiated, seitan is made from wheat gluten – which is essentially protein extracted from the wheat grain. You can get it at a lot of grocery stores and on line. It’s not cheap, but ounce-for-ounce costs less than buying prepared meat substitutes in the store. Generally some other proteins are added (this one called for chickpea flour) along with various flavor agents. The recipe carefully walks you through the instructions, but essentially, you make a dough, knead it, then portion it out and steam it. Here’s what it looks like before it goes in.

As it steams, the texture gets firmer and more dense, and voila! Fake meat. I’m not sure there was a ton of flavor in this. I put in in the Pepperjack Cheesesteaks. I don’t know that I need to have those again, but the leftovers of the cashew-based Pepperjack Cheese Sauce made for a pretty good queso dip stand-in. I put it on some things from the Salads section. The Shredded Beef and Cabbage Salad with Peanut and Lime was fine, but you’ve had this salad before. I also put it on the Steak Salad with Green Gorgonzola (although I used store-bought feta). Something about the balsamic dressing recipe salad made me crave this salad daily, so I also took the suggestion to top it with portobellos, and it was just as good.

From the sandwiches section, I also made the Spicy Tempeh Tuna Salad. It calls for kelp powder to make it taste fishy, but I couldn’t taste it. I also don’t know what was supposed to make it spicy – the ¼ teaspoon of ground pepper wasn’t it. Anyway, there are fake chicken/tuna salad recipes I like better.

From the Beef Stews section, I made the Lasagne Bolognese Stew.

The “meat” in this just lentils and faux-beef stock (which you can buy or make). This was a much healthier version of the lasagne soup I usually make (I’m looking at you, kale, and also appreciating your appearance, olives.) The Nutty Ricotta, made of cashews and almonds, and a dollop of which goes on top, was the star (more on the winning fake cheeses in this book later). Something was off with this recipe, because it only calls for four cups of water. Half a box of a lasagna noodles isn’t going to cook in four cups of water, some of which was already sucked up by the lentils. But whatever, easily remedied. Overall, this is hearty and flavorful, and one of the easier recipes in the book.

I didn’t make a lot of things in the Pigs are Friends not Food section, because (and I know, I know), even thinking about eating pigs makes me so sad. Also, even before I gave up meat, I did not get the obsession with bacon. There is nothing about bacon that a little liquid smoke poured on literally anything can’t equal. Sorry not sorry. That said, I made the Pantry Mushroom Bacon to add to a Cobb Salad. This requires only five basic ingredients which you already have (in addition to the mushrooms) . Easy and good. A keeper for this purpose.

Somehow the Roast Turki didn’t work as well as the beef. After it baked for the required amount of time, it was still very spongy and raw-seeming. I steamed it for an additional 30 or so minutes which helped a little, but enough that I wanted to eat it. The flavor was good; the texture not so much. Undeterred, and not wanting to waste it, I forged ahead and make the Turki Tetrazini from the Pasta and Noodles section. This was the low point of the book for me – the kind of recipe that just makes me angry, because by the time I made the fake turkey and the fake cheese sauce and sliced all the veg and boiled the pasta and baked the casserole, it still tasted like something I could have made in ten minutes by crumbling some tofu and opening a can of soup, and not had 20 dishes to clean. But all is not lost. Also from that section I made a version of the Truffled Lobster Mac & Cheese. I didn’t make the fake lobster (out of hearts of palm) but the truffle cheese sauce? Yesss, please.

Conveniently, my journey through Fake Meat coincided with the football playoffs and the Australian Open, so yay for the Small Things chapter. The Peanut Lime Tempeh Wings came with a very tasty peanut sauce – a nice way to incorporate protein-dense tempeh into one’s snacking regimen. I also made the Chick’n Nuggies. These are created from a Texturized Vegetable Protein (TVP) which is a dehydrated soy-based product with a granular texture, pea protein (which you can generally find at stores along with other protein powders), white beans, and gluten flour. These are rolled out into logs and steamed. When the meat is done, they logs are sliced a breaded. The book calls for deep frying, but as you know, I am afraid of deep frying, so I air fried them. They came out tasty and filling and had a great texture and flavor.

The recipe made enough that I could have little yummy protein bites as snacks for the next few days, and also toss some on to the Cobb Salad mentioned above. But be advised, this process takes a long time, folks, and I’m not sure anyone needs a homemade chick’n nugget that badly when there are so many versions in the store. But who am I to judge. Now queue the Rosemary Mini Drumsticks. Both the filling and the wrappers of these are made of yuba – thin sheets of tofu skin — which is a very difficult product to find. There are small packages of fresh yuba at a health food store near me (although this recipe called for dried). But it’s worth it to look, because these are chewy and soy-sauce -satisfying, and perfect when you want to offer a fancy hors d’oevre.

And now the best for last – the Non-Dairy Diaries. GURL, PLEASE. The fake cheese in this chapter is revolutionary. A couple caveats: It realllly helps to have a high speed blender to make these. But as a vegan, this is something you really should consider investing in (or prowling the flea-market for) anyway. Costco quantities of cashews are also key, otherwise the nuts can be prohibitively expensive. You need a couple odd ingredients which you may have to acquire online, including tapioca starch and carageenan. These are both thickening agents, the latter of which is a derivative of seaweed. Carageenan costs bucks, but a little bag makes several batches of cheese, and really saves in the long run over what you would pay for fake cheese at the store.

First I made the Swizz Cheeze with cashews, tahini, truffle oil, and sauerkraut, among other things. As suggested by the book, I splurged on a little silicone mold, and you guys, LOOK AT THESE!

This cheese tastes amazing and slices and grates like cheese without the weird, waxy texture of some commercially available products. It also melts! Same with the “Prove-Me-Wrong Provalone.” Look at how that slices!

(Unfortunately, I accidentally made mine with unrefined coconut oil rather than refined. Turns out, coconut-flavored cheese is not okay, so the batch was a loss.) I also somehow got the texture of the Shreddy Cheddy wrong, so it was more of a soft cheese, but the flavor is SPOT ON. I was eating little nuggets of it as I typed this. I cannot wait to try it again.

I would rank this book vegan intermediate, veering on advanced, based on several unfamiliar and labor-intensive techniques as well as some unusual and expensive ingredients. This would be best acquired by a fairly experienced vegan, for whom store-bought meat substitutes have run their course, but who is already familiar with the concepts of seitan and non-dairy cheese. This is the kind of book that I fear a newbie vegan might pick up and run away screaming.

There are some really bold new ideas here – and I am so grateful to Isa Chandra Moskowitz for continuing to evolve and create options for vegans of every level of experience and commitment. I bought this book for the fake meat, and it’s good, but I’m keeping it for the fake cheese. Still thinkin’ about ya’ Shreddy Cheddy.