Volume XXII

Nothing from an Animal

Eighty vegan recipes organized around the four things that actually make vegan cooking hard: depth without bones, richness without butter, binding and browning without egg, and savoriness without anchovy or parmesan. A technique book that happens to be vegan rather than a vegetable book that happens to have no meat in it — with an honest account of which substitutions work and which never will.

Try 48 recipes free — two from every book, including this one.

What's inside

• 600 g strong white flour, for the washing
• 360 ml water
• 500 ml mushroom broth, from recipe 4
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp dried mushroom powder, recipe 36
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 1 tsp fine salt

1. Mix the flour and water to a stiff dough, knead 5 minutes and rest it under water for an hour. The rest does half the work.
2. Knead it in the bowl of water. The water goes white; pour it off, refill and keep going through six or seven changes.
3. Stop when the water runs nearly clear and what is left is a yellow-gray elastic mass about a third of the original weight.
4. Rest it 20 minutes, then stretch and knot it. Knead in the seasonings and the oil, which will fight you.
5. Wrap in cheesecloth, tie the ends, and steam 45 minutes. Then simmer in the broth and soy for 30 minutes off the boil.
6. Cool in the liquid. It slices, it browns, and it takes a marinade like nothing else here. Keeps 5 days, freezes well.