The Vegan and Vegetarian Cookbook Gift Guide

When the eggnog is flowing like water, it’s easy for vegans to feel left out at the holiday season, but they needn’t. More and more chefs are gravitating toward plant-based and animal-free cooking, and it’s so tasty, even carnivores are taking notice. If you’ve got a vegan or vegetarian (or veg-curious) eater on your gift list this year, here’s a garden-fresh crop of cookbooks sure to satisfy.
Moosewood Restaurant Favorites: The 250 Most-Requested, Naturally Delicious Recipes from One of America’s Best-Loved Restaurants, by the Moosewood Collective
When Moosewood Restaurant was founded in 1973, it wasn’t just an eating establishment, it was a movement that changed the way chefs thought about vegetarian fare forever. (Turns out, vegetables are delicious!) The original cookbook, published in 1977, quickly became a kitchen staple. This 40th birthday homage, with 250 of the most requested Moosewood recipes revised with the contemporary cook in mind, takes advantage of ingredients and tools not available to home cooks of the Nixon years (cilantro! quinoa! kasha!). There are now plenty of vegan and gluten-free offerings, as well as loads of information on pesticides, CSAs, farmers markets, and the “Dirty Dozen” (you’ll have to read to find out).
The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for the New Generation, by Mollie Katzen
Speaking of Moosewood, the author of the original 1977 cookbook, who left the collective in 1978, is back with her own 21st-century update. A woman with many fans, Katzen focuses on flavor, texture, color, and balance, offering elegant but everyday meals with plants at their heart. Less cream, butter, eggs, and cheese make these dishes not just lighter, but, in more than half of the recipes, vegan or with vegan adaptations (e.g., crumbled tofu in the lasagna rather than cheese). No doubt recipes like Lemony Caramelized Onion Mac and Gorgonzola will leave you drooling all over the beautiful illustrations by the author herself.
Vegan Stoner Cookbook: 100 Easy Vegan Recipes to Munch, by Sarah Conrique, Graham I. Haynes
Dude, where’s the meat? Not here, thanks to the team behind vegan cooking blog The Vegan Stoner (“noun: one who satisfies the munchies with resourceful, creative, instinctive cooking without using animal products.”) Irreverent as it sounds, this delightfully illustrated cookbook offers fast, cheap, easy, fast, cheap (sorry, short-term memory lapse) breakfast, lunch, munch, dinner, and dessert recipes that are meant to be merely a jumping off-point for culinary creativity. With a loosey goosey guide to approximate measurements and cheat sheets on basic techniques like how to roll…dough, this is one to give.
Isa Does It: Amazingly Easy, Wildly Delicious Vegan Recipes for Every Day of the Week, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz
Through her website, Post Punk Kitchen, and her previous cookbooks, Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook and Vegan with a Vengeance, Moskowitz has won a high-profile following, including the likes of actress Emily Deschanel and Biz Stone, cofounder of Twitter. She’s mellowed some in this latest cookbook of 150 animal-free recipes, appealing to busy home cooks limited to their local supermarkets—but that doesn’t mean her flavors have. Most dishes can be prepared in 30 minutes or less and with as few pots and pans as possible, and for beginners, she offers helpful tips, like how to “butcher” tofu and how to stock your pantry with “weirdo ingredients” like nutritional yeast.
Mayim’s Vegan Table: More than 100 Great-Tasting and Healthy Recipes from My Family to Yours, by Mayim Bialik and Jay Gordon
Perhaps this isn’t news to you, fans of The Big Bang Theory, but Blossom is kosher vegan. She’s also a Ph.D in neuroscience and apparently a hell of a good cook. The actress teamed up with a pediatrician to put together over 100 super-approachable vegan recipes even picky kids will like, including her own. She debunks myths about bringing baby up vegan, offers tips for stocking the pantry and eating out, and makes sure to include plenty of comfort foods, like Matzoh Ball Soup and French Toast, as well as more daring fare for the mature palate, while Dr. Jay jumps in with the medical perspective.
Chloe’s Vegan Italian Kitchen, by Chloe Coscarelli
Who is this Chloe of whom we speak? She’s the vegan chef who won Food Network’s Cupcake Wars and went on to publish two popular vegan cookbooks, Chloe’s Kitchen and Chloe’s Vegan Desserts. Now she does the unthinkable, going back to her Sicilian roots and turning her magic wand on pizza and pasta. Complete with a pasta identifier, substitutions for allergies, and menu ideas, it’s the perfect gift for that vegetarian, vegan, or health-conscious eater who mistakenly thought he was persona non grata in Italia.
What’s your favorite vegan or vegetarian cookbook?