Conscious cooking

As a reward for making it through the holiday season, I bought myself The Conscious Cook, by Tal Ronnen. Since I lasted six months of being vegan without buying even a single cookbook (gasp!), I have, of late, been buying myself almost every vegan cookbook I even remotely coveted. But The Conscious Cook is different-- in a very intimidating way. It bills itself as French-style vegan cooking, and it really is. A lot of the dishes involve multiple steps, with several prep-heavy items being combined on one plate. It's really complicated. You know, sauteed something on a bed of something beside something else, on top of pureed-something sauce, sprinkled with diced something. The kind of thing I would never make for myself.

So I put off buying the book. When I did buy it, I thought of it as food porn, something I could look at, and drool over, but not partake in myself. (Remember, this is food porn I'm taking about here. Get your mind out of the gutter, and stop picturing me covered in pureed something.)

But I was wrong. I have made several of the dishes. While some of them didn't turn out quite right, and some of the fake-meat ones were not as divinely-inspired as the book claims, the one I made tonight is already a staple. It has become, in my iteration, spinach pesto; and tonight I'm planning it for a weekday lunch, with kamut rotini and a bowl of butternut squash and shiitake soup. I'm sure it will be delicious, despite not being on a bed of something and sprinkled with something, diced and sauteed.