Vegan cooking for everyone - The Happy Pear

The Happy Pear are Irish twin brothers who have been very active in plant-based cooking for many years. In addition to their cafes, store and bakery, they have launched several vegan cookbooks. They are also known for their YouTube channel ️, on which they make the most delicious plant-based recipes cook .

In 2020, they will release VEGAN Cooking for Everyone. A 352-page book with more than 200 recipes. With this book The Happy Pear targets a wide audience: from people who want to eat plant-based a few times a week, to people who already have a lot of experience with vegan cook. Unfortunately, it is only available in English, though.

What's so great about VEGAN - The Happy Pear?

With VEGAN , The Happy Pear takes a different approach than other cookbooks. They provide a kind of framework with proportions that certain dishes should roughly meet - part basic vegetables such as onion and carrot, the "hero veg" that are central to the dish, seasonings to flavor the dish and whatever else is needed to shape the dish. To shape this framework, the recipes have been diagrammed.

The framework fits well with how I usually cook: I cook a lot by feeling, but the proportions have to be right. The diagrams help me to learn to cook from scratch cook, so that it becomes easier and easier to prepare tasty plant-based dishes without recipe, but by feeling.

The recipe selection in VEGAN Cooking for Everyone is very varied. From pancakes to burgers, and from curry to pie. Many dishes are somewhat more common in Western cooking than in the cookbooks of, for example Ottolenghi and Meera Sodha. Most recipes contain a nice amount and also many different kinds of vegetables. Because often the sauce also contains vegetables you get extra lots of healthy nutrients. In addition, many recipes are quite feasible to prepare on weekdays. Although the first time you cook a recipe from the book I would take a little more time for it.

VEGAN Cooking for Everyone contains many basic recipes in addition to more extensive recipes . For example, you will find some recipes for vegetable gravy, as well as for vegan bacon (based on vegetable) and they give instructions on how best to roast different vegetables in the oven .

ingredients

Most of recipes contains ingredients that are readily available. There are a few ingredients that are somewhat less common or that you don't necessarily have around the house. The ingredients described in this article on indispensable ingredients in the vegan kitchen will get you a long way. For example, noble yeast and soy sauce (or tamari) are essential to have in the house. In addition, especially for the burgers and sausages, you will need some extra ingredients :

• Psyllium Husks (psyllium fiber)
• Textured Vegetable Protein (soybean pieces or soybean chunks)
• Vital wheat (wheat gluten)

How hard is it?

Overall, all recipes in the book are doable. Compared to Flavour from Ottolenghi, for example, the recipes are a bit more accessible. For many recipes you need less time and also less ingredients .

While it's a very creative way to bring dishes back to schedules, it doesn't work equally well for all dishes. For dishes where everything is a little less precise it works perfectly: you can very easily swap out an ingredient for something that is in season or something you have on hand, but for dishes where things are more precise it doesn't work so well in my experience. For example, burgers become very tasty when I follow a recipe very closely. If I use wheat flour instead of psyllium fiber in the ratio they prescribed, they fail completely. Then again, for easier dishes, such as soup or curry, the schedules are very handy.

By showing recipes schematically, it is sometimes a little puzzling what exactly you need to do. This also makes it hard to estimate how much work a dish is and how long it will take you. For example, the Fancy Korma from Goa didn't seem like that much work to be called "fancy," but it ended up taking me quite a bit of time. Many recipes contain vegetables that you need to roast first in the oven . Many vegetables you can also roast very well in the airfryer. That way you save time and energy.

With some dishes, especially the pies, it is important to pay close attention to the proportions, though. Otherwise, there is quite a risk that it will not turn out quite as you expected. Instead of a "Shepardless pie" you get - in the words of my friend - a "lentil stew with mashed potatoes". Still tasty, but not quite what you were hoping for when you've been in the kitchen a bit longer.

Favorite dishes

• Chickpea pancakes. Now I'm also a big fan of regular pancakes, but this variation is definitely worth trying. They are savory pancakes, where you use chickpea flour instead of wheat flour. This also eliminates the need to add something to bind the pancakes, such as ground flaxseed, but also makes them gluten-free. You flavor the batter with cumin, coriander and garlic powder, making these wonderfully spicy savory pancakes. Then again, they pair really well with some agave syrup and a lump of vegetable butter.
• 15-Minute Burger. I like quick and easy, and this is the fastest and easiest burger in the book. "Minimum effort, maximum result." And yet it is a tasty and well-filled burger, with beans, mushrooms and couscous.
• Italian pumpkin and red rice salad. This salad is well-filling and nicely packed with nutrients by combining red rice, beans and vegetables. This salad is also great to take to a picnic. Because arugula is used as a salad it wilted a bit less quick. Now I personally don't like pumpkin that much in summer, so I use some grilled zucchini instead.
• Red pepper pesto and bean salad. This is a salad that can actually go all year round. The cherry tomatoes may not be quite appropriate for winter, but sometimes you just crave a salad. This salad contains a nice amount of beans, making it an instant good source of protein. It does take a bit more work for a salad, in that you have to roast leeks and make pesto from red bell pepper . To compensate for that, this salad does last about 3 days in the fridge, so make plenty.

Recommended?

Yes, this is a very good book for the beginner as well as the more advanced plant-based home cook. Unfortunately there is no Dutch version available (see the next section for cookbooks by The Happy Pear that are published in Dutch). An advantage of VEGAN Cooking for Everyone compared to cookbooks by American authors is that the quantities in this book are indicated according to the metric system. So just in milliliters and grams, instead of cups and ounces. With this book you get a good basis, with which you can make plant-based meals more easily. It offers a lot of room for variation, also within the recipes itself, which ultimately makes it easier to work without a cookbook. There is one small drawback to this: sometimes the schematic way recipes is described makes it a bit puzzling what to do. This never becomes very tedious, but sometimes it takes a little longer than expected.

Dutch-language books by The Happy Pear

Personally, I only have experience with VEGAN Cooking for Everyone, which is isn't released in Dutch. If you are looking specifically for books written in Dutch, you could take a look at De wereld van de Happy Pear ️ and De Happy Pear: recepten voor geluk ️. I can't say much about those books myself, but they do get several positive reviews. If they are as much fun as VEGAN Cooking for Everyone they are definately worth considering.

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