Reddit reviews La Dolce Vegan!: Vegan Livin' Made Easy

If you're going all the way vegan, soy curls are your friend. They have a nice bite and you can make them taste like just about anything just by changing the broth you use to rehydrate them. Gluten-free, if that matters. If you're an inventive cook, you also can do wonders with seitan, which is specifically not gluten-free (seitan is also called "gluten" some places because it's made primarily from vital wheat gluten).

My go-to veggie-specific recipe sites are VegWeb and the PPK, though, really, once you know how to make good substitutions, maybe 80% or more of the stuff on Recipezaar or AllRecipes is within your grasp. I'm all the way vegan, and I make respectable bulgogi (Korean barbecue dish usually done with beef or pork), carne asada, and turkey dinner. Insert scare quotes where appropriate.

If you'll be looking to make close analogues of meat-based dishes, check out the impressive seitan recipes in "La Dolce Vegan". These are also the broths I mentioned with the soy curls. Since I keep lots of ingredients around, I can think of a dish I want to cook and have the simpler ones (like "turkey" and gravy, Mongolian "beef," or "carne" adovada) ready in about 15 or 20 minutes.

I adapted the brownie recipe from La Dolce Vegan:

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup sugar

1 12 oz package soft or silk tofu

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup water

2 tsp vanilla extract

Oreo Cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Stir together flour, baking soda, salt, cocoa powder, and sugar and set aside. In a blender or food processor, blend together tofu, oil water, and vanilla. Add tofu mixture to dry ingredients and mix together until gently mixed.

Line a cupcake/muffin tin with paper cups. Spoon in enough of the batter to fully cover the bottom of each cup. Place an Oreo cookie into each cup. Add batter to cover the cookie. Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Makes 12-14 individual brownies.

So let us know your final verdict!

Here is a cheesy sauce I used to make all the time that my family loves. It is adapted from La Dolce Vegan by Sarah Kramer.

Ingredients:

Wolfie's Nutritional Yeast "Cheese" Sauce

1/2 cup nutritional yeast

2 TB flour (I replace with just about any GF flour)

1/2 salt

1 cup water

2 tsp oil

1 1/2 tsp oil

1 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard

1 1/2 tsp tamari (of course, use gf tamari or soy sauce or brags)

Whisk all ingredients together. Bring to a boil and reduce heat. Simmer for 2-4 minutes, constantly stirring. Makes about 1 1/2 cups.