Alan Roettinger - Speed Vegan

by

ALAN ROETTINGER

2010 Alan Roettinger

Photos 2010 Book Publishing Company

Photo credits: Warren Jefferson

Cover design: The Book Designers

Interior design: Publishers Design and Production Services

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever, except for brief quotations in reviews, without written permission from the publisher.

Published by Book Publishing Company

P.O. Box 99

Summertown, TN 38483

1-888-260-8458

www.bookpubco.com

Printed in Canada

ISBN 13: 978-1-57067-244-6

16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roettinger, Alan, 1952

Speed vegan : quick, easy recipes with a gourmet twist / by Alan Roettinger.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-57067-244-6 (alk. paper)

1. Vegan cookery. I. Title.

TX837.R742 2010

641.5636--dc22

2010003551

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Back cover: Hot Eggplant and Seitan Open-Face Sandwich,

Front flap (clockwise from top left): Gretas Cannellini Salad with Mint,

Back flap: Beet and Celery Root Salad,

You take from a recipe, but you give to a dish.

Alan Roettinger

I AM ONE UNBELIEVABLY LUCKY GUY. Wonderful things just keep happening to me. Even sorrows and disappointments have somehow turned out for the best. Maybe lucky is the wrong word. Whenever I take the time to look, regardless of success or failure, I invariably see kindness within it all, a sweetness far too deliberate and consistent to be random. I feel the presence of that indefinable supreme existence, vibrating within me, looking out for me, and I know Im beholden to it for everything. Dont ask me how, but sensing this presence fills me with both joy and gratitudewhich is all it seems to want of me, and that works out quite well. I dont get the feeling it cares one bit about being acknowledged in books, but I care, so there you have it.

There are also some people Im grateful forspecial people who make my efforts worthwhileand I want to acknowledge them too:

My profoundly beautiful wife, Marcia, an endless source of delight for me, without whose fierceness I might never have gotten my act together. Behind every great man there is a woman wishing he made more money. Private joke.

My son, Morgan, a treasure I never could have imagined, who manages to convey his love and admiration while simultaneously confronting my every weakness with piercing wit. Hes been practicing reverse psychology since he was two years old.

I try to be my best self in large part for themfor what they mean to me, and what I feel they deserve.

Im also grateful for the family of fine human beings at Book Publishing Company, who not only believed in me enough to take me on a second time but also have welcomed me into their extraordinary tribe with warmth and friendship. Special thanks to Bob and Cynthia Holzapfel, Warren and Barbara Jefferson, Barb Bloomfield (and Neal), Thomas Hupp, Rick Diamond, and Anna Pope. Heart-felt thanks to each of them for the unique talents and support they contributed to make this book possibleand fun!

Finally, I want to acknowledge and thank Jo Stepaniak, who not only fixed every one of my syntactical errors and made me look good, but did so in the most polite and respectful mannerteaching me how to write better without taking any credit. Although weve only met in writing, I consider her an invaluable and dear friend.

SPEED VEGAN

WRITING THIS COOKBOOK presented a unique challenge on two fronts. As the title suggests, the primary feature of the recipes was to be speed, specifically the speed at which a home cook will be able to complete my recipes. This stretched the envelope for me. As a chef, Im well familiar with the urgency to have everything ready on time. But the way Ive dealt with this is to plan well and start early, not try to think inside a thirty-minute box! Compounding this, I also have a near-lifelong habit of taking whatever amount of time is needed to do it right.

This is not meant to imply that there is a right and a wrong way to cook (although there probably is). On the contrary, doing it right is about reaching for something ephemeral. It refers to a state of mind, an uncompromising approach that, one hopes, may lead to excellence. If you put fast food at one end of a spectrum, doing it right would be at the opposite extremity. Its about refusing to cut corners that devalue the product, searching far and wide for the best ingredients, taking care to cut precisely, and adjusting schedules and temperatures to allow a gentle development of the ideal textures and flavors. Most of all, its about putting your heart into what you do.

Time is a major factor in all this, because although you can develop skills that enable you to work quickly, with economy of movement and efficiency of technique, you cant make natural processes happen faster. To meet this challenge, I had to make myself think like a time-pressured home cook and come up with dishes I could admire that could also be completed by the average person in a half hour or less. This was the hard part, because so many wonderful ideas end up taking longer to manifest in the kitchen than they do in the mind. Lets just say that not everything I dreamed up made the thirty-minute cut.

The other half of the title was a test also, stemming from the fact that Im not a veganat least I wasnt when I started working on this bookwhich is actually a good thing. I dont mean good for me, or good for the planet, or good for animalsI mean good for this cookbook. Heres why:

My motive in cooking has always been to create something extraordinary, something that thrills and delights the palate. When Im working within a set of guidelinessuch as low fat, gluten free, or nondairyI regard these parameters as challenges, never as any sort of goal. My objective is clear and consistent: to transform something I absolutely must have (food) into something I deeply appreciate (deliciously satisfying food). Part of that goal is to also ensure that the food is at least vaguely healthful, so it doesnt come back to haunt my pleasure with ugly consequences.