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The Real Food Daily Cookbook by Ann Gentry, Anthony Head
232 pages

 

This is a vegan cookbook. Beautifully put together; the color photos are stunning. I loved just flipping through the pages, gazing at the delectable dishes pictured. However – this is not a cookbook for novices. The recipes take time to coordinate and prepare because most of the recipes call for items that you have to pre-make – basically, there are recipes inside of the recipes. If you need sour cream, there’s a recipe for it. If you need cooked black beans, there’s a recipe for those. You will see what I mean when you read the reviews of the dishes that I made. I think the key to all of these recipes is plan, plan, plan. There is a lot of pre-planning involved in this book and if you aren’t prepared, you won’t be able to complete the dish authentically, as they are prepared in the restaurant and the end result may not be the desired end result. Also, the recipes make a ton of food. We’re fairly big eaters in our household, but we still ended up with far more food than we could eat even at two sittings.

 

The author begins the book with her story. Real Food Daily is an organic vegetarian restaurant and the recipes in this book are those served at RFD. She runs through her cooking tips and suggestions and what to equip your kitchen with (which is always helpful, especially to an inexperienced cook), including how to incorporate leftovers and prepared foods. Included in the book is a section on general guidelines for working with grains, dried beans and legumes, soy foods and brief definitions of some more unusual foods such as agar and other sea vegetables.

 

I tried many recipes, although it wasn’t difficult to get in a good number of recipes with just one. To make it easier to follow, I will list the main recipe with the component recipes underneath and what our thoughts were on all of them.

 

Better with Cheddar Nachos p. 41

  1. Cashew Cheddar Cheese p.43 – This was not an inexpensive recipe to make. It calls for 1 cup of agar flakes and that was about $13 USD. It tasted good, had a nice texture and even shredded just like dairy cheese once it set up, but the recipe made so much that we couldn’t eat it up. It ended up going bad and had to be thrown out.
  2. Black Beans p. 136 – These were good. Not much different from what I already make, though.
  3. Pico de Gallo p. 64 – Good, but nothing special.
  4. Tofu Sour Cream p. 70 – This was also good and different from what I normally make, although it was a bit too garlicky.

This whole recipe was very good, but trying to put together all of the ingredients and component recipes was extremely time-consuming. The recipe also calls for Guacamole, p. 63, but we don’t like avocados, so this was omitted.

 

Yin and Yang Salad with Peanut-Sesame Dressing p. 99

(and Quick Soba Noodle Surprise – recipe to use the leftover salad)

  1. Peanut-Sesame Dressing p. 100 – This was quick and easy to throw together and tastes great. I have used it to toss with pasta and soba noodles all by itself.
  2. Gingered Tofu p. 100 – This needs to be prepared in advance for this salad because it needs to be chilled. Great taste, though. We loved it.

This salad was a huge hit. Great flavors and the longer it sat, the better it tasted. Quick Soba Noodle Surprise was the leftover version of the salad – just toss the leftovers with cold soba noodles and serve. Delicious!

 

Spanish Rice p. 135

Very good and no extra component recipes! It made a lot, of course, but I froze the leftovers and used it later for the tostadas.

 

Seitan Tacos p. 155

  1. Basic Seitan p. 189 – This is a good recipe, and since it makes a large batch, there were leftovers to be frozen and used for other recipes in the book, Salisbury Seitan being one of them. This recipe takes a couple of hours to make, so it is by no means a fast seitan recipe and the texture is a little odd, not quite chewy and rather “soft”.
  2. Ranchero Sauce p. 67 – This sauce is excellent! It was part of the recipe, so it couldn’t be appreciated in all its glory. But we absolutely loved it on it’s own, with tortilla chips to scoop it up.
  3. Crumbled Tofu Cheddar p. 153 – This wasn’t very good and we didn’t think it tasted right topping the tacos. No one in the house liked it.

In all, the recipe for the tacos was “okay” but certainly not our favorite. We just didn’t like the seitan in these tacos. It just didn’t seem to work.

 

Black Bean Tostadasp. 165

  1. Refried Black Beans p. 137 – This was a good way to use up the leftover Black Beans I cooked up for the nachos. They tasted good and were insanely easy to make.
  2. Spanish Rice p. 135
  3. Tofu Sour Cream p. 70
  4. Pico de Gallo p. 64

Yum! Good way to use up all of those leftovers from the nachos. We even topped these with some shredded Cashew Cheddar Cheese. The only extra thing I had to do for this was to fry the corn tortillas.

 

Seitan Fajitasp. 174

  1. Chicken-Style Seitan p. 175 – This seitan recipe reminds me of the flavor of the Tofurkey roasts I buy at Thanksgiving time. We all liked it. It is a time-consuming recipe, taking about 2 ½ hours in the oven to bake and then it has to cool completely. You definitely need to plan ahead when making this recipe. Best to make it the day before you need it. Freezes nicely.

I made these fajitas using the Chicken-Style Seitan recipe from the book and they were good, but the second time I made them, I used my own seitan recipe and we liked them even better. The recipe is fantastic, so I’ll continue to make it, just using my seitan instead.

 

Salisbury Seitan p. 188

This was super yummy and extremely filling. I don’t remember what Salisbury steak tastes like, so I can’t really compare. This is a dish that my family has requested I make again. It didn’t really take long to make at all. The seitan was already pre-made and the gravy was quick to put together. The only time involved was the marinating time for the seitan.

 

Tofu Cheesecake with Raspberry Puree p. 216

The raspberry puree and the crust are the only things going for this “cheesecake”. It was not a big hit in my house. At all. In fact, one taste and my daughter turned up her nose and refused to eat the rest of it. It didn’t taste like cheesecake and I’m not sure if it was even supposed to or not. It had a nice texture, but the flavor just wasn’t good.

 

Chocolate Chip Cookies p. 219

This was the first recipe I tried out of the cookbook. Who can blame me? The photo of these cookies made me want to eat the page! Nice, fat, perfectly round cookies just begging me to make them and eat them and – bonus! – wheat-free. They turned out a little dry, but they did taste great. Next time I make them, I’ll add slightly less flour. They were perfect to dunk in a glass of vanilla soy milk.

 

In all, the recipes were pretty good, but definitely not a book for a beginner. Making all of the components of the recipe your self is fun to do, but not something I care to do on a regular basis. This cookbook comes out only when I have the extra time to spend in the kitchen or when I’ve spent time preparing the components in advance. What I love about the cookbook is that the desserts were all wheat-free and free of refined sugars and very little fat in any of the recipes. It’s a beautiful book, with lovely, glossy photos. Based on my experience in the kitchen with the recipes and my family’s response, my rating for the book is 3 forks.

 

VegPeople Rating:

3 forks out of 4

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