Vegan with a Vengeance: Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Vegan with a Vengeance: Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock Reviews

• 
  Sean Barrs

  I’ve been a vegan for almost six years, and in that time I’ve amassed a rather large collection of plant based cookbooks.
  
  And some of them feel very samey, filled with very similar main courses and sides. Some are overly fancy with complex dishes of expensive ingredients I’ve never even heard of. They’re impractical. Veganism doesn’t have to be difficult and the food involved doesn’t have to require huge amounts of effort and time. It can be simple and straightforward just like this cookbook. This is packed full of so many recipes and ideas, none of them particularly difficult or expensive. The muffins were a particular favourite of mine.
  
  So this is a good cookbook if you want relatively quick vegan food that is still healthy and tasty. Very much recommended.
• 
  Trish

  O.M.G. I should have known, after using
  Veganomicon for a couple of years, that the cookbook that launched Isa Chandra Moskowitz was bound to be a keeper. Isa credits Terry Hope Romero with the Chili Sin Carne recipe that ROCKS with its own calypso band on days 2 and 3. Make it a day early if you've guests coming and this recipe will stay in your memory forever. And the Macadamia-Coconut-Carrot Cake is, without exaggeration, the far-and-away BEST carrot cake I have ever encountered. I probably would use 1/4-1/2 cup less sugar because I am not enamored of sweets so sweet, but let's not quibble. This is pure, unadulterated GENIUS. I am a fan. If everyone knew that going meatless was so bloody delicious, this would end any argument. I almost feel like laughing when I hear "don't tell them it's vegan"--as though unaugmented vegetable matter were something queer. But what strikes me again, after working my way through
  Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and
  The Joy of Vegan Baking, is how baked goods suffer not at all from lack of eggs or milk products. In fact, these baked goods are among the best I have ever tasted. Full stop.
• 
  Amanda

  I like the photos in this volume. Not as many entrees I want to try as I had hoped, but a grand emphasis on fun vegan breakfasts.
• 
  Kathryn

  Very good, but necessarily recommended for those exploring/dabbling in a plant based diet.
  
  I'm a huge fan of Isa's recipes. Though I have only made a few from this cookbook so far, I have made several from
  Appetite for Reduction: Fast and Filling Low-Fat Vegan Meals and
  Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook and been impressed with almost every single one. "Veganomicon" has some more complex recipes, but "Appetite" and "Vegan/Vengeance" have many recipes that are very easy or fairly easy to make and probably would not intimidate even novice chefs or those new to vegan cooking/baking. They are sooo delicious!
  
  The Post Punk Vegan Kitchen is Isa's website and I highly recommend it for those new to veganism, dabbling in it, or who just want to check out some of her recipes before they invest in one of the books:
  http://www.theppk.com/
  
  I personally enjoy the chatty style in her cookbooks and it helps me feel like I have a friend in the kitchen and gives me some added confidence while I cook. However, this could be a bit off-putting for those wanting just a "plant based diet" or to omnivores dabbling in some meat free meals who don't want lessons about why veganism is an ethical choice. Also, I must say I was a little disappointed (and thus docking one star) in "Vengeance" because, amongst some personal anecdotes, Isa includes one with a political slant that could alienate readers not of her persuasion. Of course, it is certainly her prerogative to share her political opinions and they are probably ones that many vegans would agree with. But, something makes me a bit uncomfortable about the way it was presented, as if everyone reading her book would agree with her and I know that not all vegans would. This might be off-putting to some readers, or to some people exploring the idea of becoming vegan, if it is a political affiliation they do not identify with themselves. Many people already assume a lot of things about you if you say you are vegan. Political affiliation is probably one of them. I personally think that animal welfare is something that people from all political persuasions can and should consider. I remain a big Isa fan, I think her heart is in the right place and her recipes rock, but I do wish this book had not included that particular story because it could infuriate rather than welcome certain people to the vegan fold.
  
• 
  jess

  I've been cooking out of VWAV for several years now; it's about time I write a review for it.
  
  If you are new to vegan cooking, or looking for a basic place to start wooing a vegan date, this is a solid, dependable book to start with. While I love Isa's newer book (veganomicon) a lot more, I have to give credit where credit is due and say that VWAV is the root of much of my cooking ability. I would be lying if I didn't say that many of the basic dishes that I science up on the regular come from this cookbook. The biscuits that accompany my family's famous secret recipe vegan gravy - they are the biscuits from this book. The muffin recipes are semi-dependable, although I don't love the pumpkin muffins. The seitan recipe is simple & good.
  
  Isa Chandra Moskowitz is a shining star in the vegan cookbook world, providing recipes that are often kid-pleasing, easy to cook, and push us vegans out of the "stir-fried tofu" arena into greener pastures. Some techniques that seem intimidating are clearly explained in the PUNK POINTS sections. This cookbook not only provides inspirational recipes - it gives you the tools & talents you need to take your cookery onto another level. I am definitely a better person as a result of this cookbook. And how many cookbooks can you say that about? Not too many.
• 
  Alix

  As a professed hater of vegetables, it's nothing short of amazing that I even picked up a vegan cookbook, let alone gave it 5 stars. I don't consider myself a vegan, in fact, I love meat. But I do hate tortured animals and chemical additives, so I thought I'd give it a try. I've made about 8 of these recipes and each one has turned out divine. What do I mean by divine? Suffice it to say that my fiance is usually considered the best cook in the house, but after cooking those last 8 recipes, he quickly abdicated the throne and I now feel like a vegan Rachel Ray:)
• 
  Andrew

  It doesn't quite feel right only giving this book five stars. It was more than a cookbook, it was an education. Isa's prediction from her introduction absolutely came true for me:
  
  "A cookbook isn't just light beach reading; it becomes part of your life. In a few month's time it will be scribbled with your notes and splashed with tamari and tomato sauce. Its food-stained, dog-eared pages will bring back memories"
  
  As a vegetarian for over a decade, I decided 2012 would the year I would go completely vegan. As a companion to making the switch, I resolved to cook every recipe in this book over the course of the year. Although I started the year making great progress, after a few months I started to burn out. It wasn't just cooking from the same cookbook all the time that got me, it was just having to cook recipes all the time rather than just throwing together something simple like beans and rice on some nights. So I adjusted my goal to cooking half the recipes in the book, and I'm happy to day I exceeded that target (by my count there are 133 unique recipes - I made 72).
  
  There is no doubt the type of cooking Isa is presenting in this book is comfort food, not health food. It's full of oil, white flour, syrup, refined sugar, etc. But to a new vegan it's great, because it proves there is even such a thing as vegan comfort food. I'd say the books strongest section is brunch, just about everything in there is amazing. The main courses are a little more hit and miss, but there are some truly exceptional ones in there. Check my progress updates on the book for my ratings of each of the recipes I cooked. After a year of cooking, my top five are:
  
  1. Mushroom and Sun-dried Tomato Risotto [pg 186]
  2. Brooklyn Pad Thai [pg 180]
  3. Pancakes [pg 31]
  4. Isa Pizza [pg 131]
  5. Marinated Tofu [pg 145]
  
  Thank you Isa for making this book. We've been on quite a journey together, and it's been delicious.
• 
  Lisa Vegan

  This cookbook is so entertaining and the recipes look great. Have read a lot of this cookbook, although haven't yet tasted any of the recipes. But I can tell that I'd find them delicious. The recipes look relatively easy to make although many have a lot of ingredients. I highly recommend this cookbook.
• 
  Cindy

  This is a reread for me. I got my first copy when it came out in 2005. It was the first cookbook I bought for myself and the first one I read that felt like it was for me. It was a little edgy with a do your own thing, punk rock, love life kind of vibe. It was a good jumping off point. Techniques and tools are explained well, most of the recipes are super easy and the food rocks. Everything I've made from the book so far has been good. My carnivorous buddies even like what I've made for them.
  
• 
  melissa

  I finally got this last week! I LOVE IT! Isa is freakin AMAZING, she writes like how I talk (but not like how I think. How I think is much more Jane Austen.) and this has ot be the most exciting, inspiring cookbook I've ever laid my feasty little eyes and hands on. I would put it straight into my belly but then I couldn't make things like....coconut pancakes with pineapple sauce. Or Butternut squash vindaloo. Or pomegranate tofu and coconut rice and summer rolls and fauxstess cupcakes and and and....oh man! Now, I'm not completely vegan as I have this fear of letting go of cheese but I think that I will be rolling in the vegany goodness for a long time with this book.
  
  
• 
  Alissa

  I received this last year for xxx-mas from melissa. (yeah?) Seriously, Isa does a good job about telling a story and making it interesting, but her flavor profiles are off. I KNOW that being a good cook doesn't mean following a recipe, but sometimes when it says "This is really good and yadda yadda" in the book and on the web site I trust too much. So... with a grain of salt (literally TASTE everything you make in a small batch before you commit to ANYTHING in this book) I enjoy this book for it's great ideas, but momma needs to catch up with someone who will make her CHECK and RECHECK her ratio's and flavor profiles.
  rar rar rar food.
• 
  CJ Juntunen

  I was pretty disappointed with this book overall. It didn't have anything that you can't find in every other vegan cookbook. I was looking for a fresh, unique take, but it only offered the same old boring recipes you can find everywhere. For a beginner, it will probably be helpful if it's one of the first cookbooks you read, but for a veteran vegan cook, it's old hat.
• 
  Tasty VN

  That good
• 
  Aja Marsh

  Never got the original one, this one is full of even more fun ideas and interesting flavor combinations and lots of yummy treats! I might have to pick this one up for the bookshelf...
• 
  Ellen

  I started reading the original cookbook (checked out from the library) but had to return it before I finished it. When I got another copy, it was the 10-year anniversary edition. Both are good in their own ways. The new version is automatically good because it has tons more pictures. BUT Isa updated her intro, and in doing so, a new reader misses out on her entire story of what brought her to write the book, which I found helped to make the book. Otherwise, I'm excited to try out a ton of the recipes, as they sound delicious.
  
  (And yes Tegan, it's another cookbook)
• 
  Rebecca

  I was a vegan for a couple decades, and even though my diet now includes meat (for health reasons), I still have allergies that make good vegan recipes a must have. Back in the day, I used to frequent Post Punk Kitchen quite a lot. The Snobby Joe recipe from that site still sits in our family recipe binder (all marked up with vegan goop and dark red rooibos tea stains); I still think it’s better than any Sloppy Joe I’ve ever had (don’t fight me on it until you’ve tried it). However, PPK’s heavy reliance on soy, sugar, wheat —and the perpetual vegan fav—NOOSH (nutritional yeast for noobs), made it less attractive when my adult onset allergies really started to worm their way into my system.
  
  This really is, for me, the true test of any vegan cookbook—flexibility and accessibility for all sorts, even folks who can’t dump sugar and yeast all over their tacos (pun intended).
  
  There are enough recipes here I can eat, though, that look amazing and will likely taste great. We made the Coconut Mint Chutney, for instance, and it is freakin phenomenal; instant staple, truly. Totally up to PPK’s usual standards.
  
  Unfortunately, the dessert section is a complete wash out if you don’t eat refined sugars or wheat. This might be okay, like 10 years ago, but 6 years ago (when this was published, I believe), it’s odd. Like was Fizzle not available to offer up alternatives to things like brown sugar or confectioners sugar? Could it have hurt to put just one or two dessert recipes that wouldn’t spike your blood sugar and send you running for the Monistat?
  
  If this isn’t a concern for you, and you’re just looking for a good, old-fashioned vegan cookbook—NOOSH away!
  Still a four star cookbook for me, regardless (mostly for the yummy chutney).
• 
  Elizabeth

  I didn't think it fair to rate this book, as I neither finished reading it nor made recipes from it. My fiance and I are both enthusiastic omnivores, but are looking for new ways of incorporating veggie protein in our diet in order to diversify, save money, and be planet friendly. This cookbook came highly recommended, but as with
  Veganomicon The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook, I was underwhelmed. A number of the recipes looked interesting, but required enough specialty ingredients in place of meat/dairy to be off-putting. The entrees sounded good, but not particularly unique. The over-the-top punk vegan righteousness was a bit much as well - I guess that's to be expected from a book with VENGEANCE in the title - but as an omnivore, I really appreciate tolerance and understanding among my vegan friends about my eating and lifestyle choices, just as I try to express tolerance and understanding towards theirs.
  
  In short, I was hoping this book would get me excited about cooking vegan. Instead I was pretty turned off, and returned it and
  Veganomicon The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook to the library today.
• 
  Katherine

  Isa's writing helped me work out what I had preceived as dissonance between the counter-cultural idealism of my youth and the responsible adultness necessary to have a family and be married to a pastor. She calls it being "post-punk." I thought I had just gotten boring. But I'm over the hump now. I've been learning over the last few years that it is possible to be radical (okay, I'll say it one more time. . . and idealistic) and discontent with the state of the world in the process of doing things like taking your kids to preschool and finding yourself chagrined to be living in the suburbs.
  
  All this from a cookbook.
  
  The curried pea soup is easy and delicious. And I pulled off the peanut butter cookies at a church picnic.
• 
  Tammy

  This book was the book that made me know that I could follow my heart and eat a plant-based diet. I've always felt badly about eating animals but was raised an 'omni' so it was hard to make the switch--or so I thought. The recipes in this book are ridiculously tasty and flavorful. I still use this book but it is not quite as healthful as Moskowitz's Appetite for Reduction which I now use far more often (it is another of my very fav cookbooks!). Anything Isa writes is worth getting...she has a new one out now which is on my list to get soon.
  
  If you love animals, get this book and make the switch. It will benefit animals, the earth/environment, and your own health. :)
• 
  Jenny

  All around basic, easy, and tasty recipes for vegans (and non-vegans hoping to impress their vegan girlfriends). Usually, cookbooks have a few duds but everything that I've made so far (about 15 recipes) has been good. I am addicted to the Cajun french fries, the asparagus and sun-dried tomato frittata is nom nom, and the sparkled ginger cookies (with my addition of crystallized ginger) is maybe in the top three of my favorite cookies that I've ever made (and I will admit I generally like a lot of butter in my cookies). Good to have in your arsenal.
• 
  Hope

  I really enjoyed this cookbook! I made several recipes from it, always omitted the oil as I cook without it. Every single thing I made tasted WONDERFUL!!!
  I forgot to mention it here on my Goodreads earlier, as in when I first checked it out from the library and started using it, but this is definitely one I need to buy! It is awesome! :-D
• 
  Ramey Moore

  mostly damn good recipes. I wouldn't do the carrot coriander soup though, unless you like a soup that is like a bland carrot hummus. Emphasis on bland.
• 
  Lisa Factora-borchers

  Just awesome. So much creativity. I want to be BFF with Isa.
• 
  Ash

  This is the book that you should get if you are planning on becoming a vegan. Amazing recipes! Every single recipe is delicious. My most favorite cookbook.
• 
  Holly Scudero

  It’s been ten years since vegan chef Isa Chandra Moskowitz published her first book. Now “Vegan with a Vengeance” is back with a tenth-anniversary edition, complete with updated recipes, a few new recipes, and more tips from the infamous Fizzle, Moskowitz’s cat. Readers who already have a tattered copy of the original will love the simplified directions and shortened ingredients lists, as well as the inclusion of several popular recipes from the author’s blog and other cookbooks. New readers will fall in love with Moskowitz’s accessible and flavorful style of vegan cooking, not to mention the pages and pages of mouthwatering photographs. Try some amazing Lemon-Poppy Seed Muffins for breakfast, Chili sin Carne al Mole for lunch, and Seitan-Portobello Stroganoff for dinner. Learn how to make your own seitan for that matter, and get some ideas for amazing pizza topping combinations. Make a pan of Deluxe Cocoa Brownies or a couple dozen Buttery Lemon Cutout Cookies. Or try out other desserts, like Coconut Heaven Cupcakes or Raspberry Blackout Cake. Eating vegan is not boring, and it is definitely not a sacrifice of any kind when a cookbook like this is available!
  
  (Review originally written for San Francisco Book Review.)
  
• 
  Rachael Walker

  This is the iconoclast of vegan cooking, and for good reason. This whole book dazzles, especially for brunch. I HIGHLY recommend the Chocolate Mocha Muffins, which are THE best muffins I’ve ever had, vegan or not. Chandra is funny, approachable, and straightforward. The recipes are easy to follow and ask for commonplace ingredients (vegan-wise — you will need nutritional yeast and tofu, but if you don’t know what aquafaba is you’re still in the clear) and encourage experimentation. LOVE this cookbook.
• 
  Megan

  "Vegan with a Vengeance" is a true standout among vegan cookbooks. With over 150 tantalizing, budget-friendly, and animal-free recipes that pack a punch, this book has become a staple in my kitchen. From breakfast to dinner, the recipes are creative, easy to follow, and always produce amazing results. As a longtime vegan, I appreciate the wide range of dishes that the author offers, from traditional favorites to modern twists. I highly recommend this cookbook to anyone, especially new vegans looking for accessible and delicious recipes.