The Vegetarian Flavor Bible – a review

I want to tell you about a nearly priceless culinary resource in my kitchen.  Of course, even though it’s nearly priceless, I still happily paid for it. And I’m here to tell you that it’s worth every penny!  Using this resource, I know I can achieve a wide variety of unique dishes that are bursting with flavor.

On a recent trip to the gift shop at Patrick O’Connell’s fabulous Inn at Little Washington in the lovely Virginia countryside, I happened upon The Vegetarian Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg.  I’d heard about the book, but I had not yet had the chance to open it and leaf through its pages. It seemed like a great investment for a newly-minted vegan chef.  So I bought it on the spot.

Published in 2014, The Vegetarian Flavor Bible is a followup book to The Flavor Bible.  Both award-winning books are widely hailed as essential guides to culinary creativity.  They are not your usual cookbooks.  Rather than being filled with recipes, they provide an A-Z guide to the ingredients in our pantries and refrigerators.  While I suppose it would have worked for me to use the original book, I am thrilled to have a resource that’s specifically geared to those of us who celebrate veggies and eschew meat.

Breaking Reliance on Recipes

As part of my professional training at the School of Natural Cookery, my instructors encouraged me to learn to cook without reliance on recipes.  This method of cooking frees me to use the ingredients I’ve got on hand rather than running to the store for an item that a particular recipe specifies.  And I feel like I’m channeling my grandma.  She used to make flaky “cathead” biscuits (so called because of their size and shape, not ingredients!) using a “handful” of this and a “pinch” of that.

So I’m following in my grandma’s footsteps when I whip up a dish without tedious attention to precise measurements.  As you might expect, I am more stringent when baking so that I will get the right chemistry to make the goodies rise.  Yet I’ve largely broken free from my old reliance on recipes.  Of course, I do still use recipes for inspiration and to describe my culinary adventures to other people.

A new chef can find it intimidating to improvise flavor combinations.   It’s not uncommon to think, “What will I serve my dinner guests if the ingredients don’t work together as I expect?”  That’s where The Vegetarian Flavor Bible saves the day.

Finding Flavor Affinities

Perhaps I can best explain the value of this resource by providing an example. Recently, when I’d bought a large quantity of sweet potatoes and was looking for a new and different way to serve them, I opened The Vegetarian Flavor Bible and navigated to the entry for Sweet Potatoes.  I was pleased to find the suggested flavor affinity of “sweet potatoes + ginger + limes + pears.”   I pressure steamed the potatoes to creamy sweetness, then I split them open.  Before serving them, I poured on a tangy sauce made of ginger, limes and pears.  I was pleased with the result:  a vibrantly colorful dish that looked tempting on the table and delivered a palate-pleasing, sweet-and-sour flavor combination.  No complicated recipes or measurements were needed.

Other Fine Features

The Vegetarian Flavor Bible wins kudos from me for many other fine attributes besides its suggested flavor affinities.  It offers a silky, book-marking ribbon that quickly redirects me to a particular page.  It’s bound with a sturdy, hardback cover that will no doubt survive regular usage.  It provides an informative section on Vegetarianism Through the Ages.  (Who knew that folks like us have been around so long?)  It includes valuable sidebars (like “MISO, from Quietest to Loudest”).  It’s beautifully illustrated with colorful photographs.  And it is amazingly comprehensive;  the alphabetical listing contains not only an extensive array of vegetarian-friendly ingredients but even includes items like “Thickening Agents,” “Vegan Egg Substitutes” and “Breakfast and Brunch.”

Many thanks, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, for producing an invaluable resource that I’m sure will be the backbone of my career as a vegan chef!