Get Yer Veggies Out

[Guest guest]

Posted by Rod Weatherbie in books, news and media, vegetarian on June 20, 2008 at 5:02 pm

 

Get it Ripe: a Fresh Take on Vegan Cooking and Livingby Jae SteeleArsenal Pulp Press271 pages$24.00

Years ago I tried vegetarianism. At the time it was for vague political reasons. Plus a lot of my friends were doing it, so I figured it would be easy if there was a support group. Ah, peer pressure.

After about a year I stopped, not because of any big revelation, but because I wanted some of my mother’s shepherd’s pie. She had been quite supportive of the whole thing and was game to try to cook vegetarian. Maybe that was the problem. Not with her cooking, but with the fact that at the time we didn’t have access to any good vegetarian recipes, beyond scrambled tofu. And there wasn’t any internet to go running to for inspiration. So we ended up suffering through a number of sad gray meals once salads got boring.

Had I a copy of Jae Steele’s new cookbook, Get It Ripe, I don’t think I would still be vegetarian but I may have held out little longer. And had a better time doing it.

 

Toronto-based registered holistic nutritionist and author Steele has worked some magic in her attempt to teach the beginner vegetarian/vegan about the health benefits of the lifestyle with food that isn’t bland.

This isn’t strictly a cookbook. The title says it all. Steele spends the first 100 pages of the book outlining what veganism means, from political motivations to the alternative health thinking behind it. Some of the health theories are a little suspect. There is a lot of sympathetic magic involved (if it’s sour, it associated with your liver and therefore good for it, etc). but at the same time, Steele brings in her nutritionists’ knowledge which is a little more consensus-based.

Steele talks about the benefits of an animal-free diet (for example, vegans consume considerably less bad cholesterol that the average North American) and how to go about maintaining it. The amount of energy required to think about eating healthy seems excessive. The medicinal benefits of each element of the food can be distracting: sometimes I don’t care that my morning oatmeal is good for my nervous and immune systems. I just want it to taste good.

My favourite part of her vegan manifesto is advice for vegans dining out. Anyone who has had to suffer through a dinner with a politically motivated, proselytizing vegan/vegetarian/macrobioticist/raw-foodist will appreciate her honesty.

 

She advises diners to resisting talking negatively about other folks’ food choices (advice I too could follow) as it’s bad form and bad for the digestion. She also admonishes those who beat up on themselves for falling off the wagon. “Eating a few less nutritious meals won’t kill you, so don’t be too hard on yourself; choose the best foods available and have a good time.â€

And as a motivating factor for a lot of people who may not be convinced of veganism’s virtues, Steele has developed a number of recipes that even an unabashed omnivore will like.

Despite the difficulty of some recipes (food processors feature prominently in a number of them as do specialty ingredients) Steele manages to live up to her promise of making vegan treats that are delicious.

In our kitchen my wife and I chose four recipes to test.

The first was a dish of crispy fried tofu (pg 123). This is dead easy; thin-sliced tofu marinated in tamari soy (and it has to be tamari soy, run-of-the-mill Kikkoman just ain’t going to cut it) dusted with Nutritional yeast and fried. Nutritional yeast (or food yeast) is a de-activated yeast similar to brewer’s yeast.

The only difficulty with this recipe is the tofu. Even the firm tofu has a tendency to fall apart when sliced thin. But what of the flavour? It’s all umami, so you can’t go wrong. It’s incredibly rich and a little goes a long way. It’s almost like cheesy bacon. It’s in the breakfast section of the cookbook, but it’s also delicious with beer.

We also tried two straight-forward salads. Most people have their own variations on these recipes; tabouli (pg 153) and salsa (pg 144). The tabouli was a little different as Steel replaces the traditional bulgur wheat with quinoa which has a great texture and it is apparently really good for you. Her salsa recipe was equally good and simple.

Last but not least, we decided to conquer an item from the large and varied baking section. The biggest challenge, Steel admits, when baking vegan is creating something that is rich and worthy of seconds. If the zucchini date muffins are an indication of the other baked recipes in her book, she’s succeeded. The muffins are definitely heavier than traditionally-prepared muffins but have a complex flavour that depends heavily on cinnamon and fresh ginger for oomph. And for a treat that has no sugar, relying solely on dates for sweetness, these satisfy. Although, I have to admit to having my second muffin with a thick slathering of most definitely un-vegan butter. Lovely.

Get it Ripe isn’t a bad place to start for aspiring vegans, although it helps to have some idea of how to cook in the first place. This isn’t a how-to for beginner cooks. Steele expects that readers will know a bit about navigating around their home kitchens. The skeptics among us might also want to skip the sections on Chinese medicine and the “life force†of raw foods.

While it won’t convert me to veganism, I will definitely be incorporating some of her recipes into my repertoire.

Rod Weatherbie is a Toronto-based journalist. He is also partly responsible for Gadzooks! an online arts zine.

 

 

Peter vv._,___

 

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