Back off, Rachel Ray. There’s a new cookbook in town. More eco-friendly than Betty Crocker and easier to read than the Dummy’s Guide To, Veganomicon is quite simply the best thing to hit kitchens everywhere.
     Crocker and her counterparts often deliver recipes and tips in the condescending tone of a least-favorite aunt with plastic on her couches and the smell of cabbage in her kitchen. Veganomicon reads more like a conversation with that hip and funny older sister you always wanted—who also happens to know how to draw flavors out of vegetables and other hearty animal-free foods. Here’s a clue, Aunt Vera, it starts with not boiling them to paste.
     As the name implies, Veganomicon is a vegan cookbook (not quite as authoritative as a lexicon or an economics text, but in many ways, just as intelligent). Vegan cooking, for those of you not yet schooled in the principles of earth- and animal-friendly diets, is cooking without the use of any animal products. Not only do the recipes not use meat, but there’s no dairy, no eggs, and no honey.
     While those dietary restrictions may sound like gastronomic suicide to you, authors Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero assure the reader from the first pages this will not be your ordinary vegan cookbook. Recipe titles like “Pumpkin baked ziti with caramelized onions and sage crumb topping,” “Asparagus quiche with tomatoes and tarragon,” and “Spicy tempeh nori rolls” will have you ready to surrender your steak knife forever, or at least for long enough to enjoy these flavorful dishes. If the names don’t get you, the brilliantly colored photos will.

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     Moskowitz and Romero broke the book down so that it could be a practical guide to any chef, whether seasoned or rare.
      Tips spot almost every page of the book. Cooking techniques at the beginning will help you through the intimidating chef terminology, like deglazing and caramelizing. Chapters cover the how-to of cooking vegetables and grains, stocking pantries, and collecting kitchen equipment. All in all, it’s a readable and approachable text, capable of making even the most reluctant chef believe a few hours in the kitchen could be well spent after all.
     And the best part? The wit and humor laced through the pages may actually be capable of making you laugh out loud. That’s a rare pleasure for anyone who’s like me in the kitchen: so bound up in her own fear of burning the rice that she forgets to add the water.