Veteran author Isa Chandra Moskowitzs latest cookbook serves up homemade takes on all the fake meat your heart desires.
Simply Recipes / Isa Chandra Moskowitz
You cant talk about vegan cookbooks without Isa Chandra Moskowitz coming up.
Aside from fake meat, whimsy is the common thread.
Simply Recipes / Isa Chandra Moskowitz
The diversity of ingredients is a boon, too.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Thats why I wrote the cookbook.
Ive been doing it since Ive been vegan, so for over 30 years.
Ive always loved recreating meat.
A lot of my recipes in general end up being meaty.
Why do you think that is?For me, thats what I grew up with.
When I went vegetarian, it wasnt like Im vegetarian because I dont like meat.
It was for the animals.
So I was like, I really like spareribs.
How do I recreate this?
I dont think its anything deeper than that.
There are so many plant-based meats on the market now compared to even five years ago.
Why make fake meat yourself?For taste, and for the joy of it.
I think cooking is fun.
I think the question is, why would you cook?
Because really all it is is just cooking.
How is Fake Meat organized?Some of the recipes are more run-of-the-mill, like a lentil meat.
I compartmentalize the recipes to be stuff thats weeknight-friendly and stuff thats a showstopper centerpiece.
Obviously, thats really different from making [vegan] spaghetti and meatballs.
Which are also in the book.
Can we talk about puns?
Youve always used puns as titles for your recipes and books.
And this book in particular has both literary and visual puns.
Puns were once a fixture of vegan recipes.Have they fallen out of favor?
I think people have just run out of puns.
Like Oh god, what am I going to call this beef?
Its about keeping the puns fresh and appetizing.
For my boeuf Bourguignon, I called itJacques Boeuf Bourguignon, because its made with jackfruit.
So the pun is more about French cooking.
We were on the bus, and I wasnt vegan or vegetarian yet.
And I really liked it.
I thought, I could eat this.
Ive called it the pocket seitan ever since.
From there, I tried a bunch of fake meats.
I didnt think anything of it.
Some of the things now people say about fake meatWhy do you eat it if youre vegan?
You eat what tastes good and doesnt contain animals.
And that was my mentality from the beginning.
I wasnt like Im going to go vegan and eat vegetables.
Vegetables were the last frontier for me.
I was immediately drawn to tofu dogs and unturkey.
Thats how the community I grew up in communicated.
I dont think its necessarily unique to me.
Not that many people from that Gen X, DIY community ended up writing cookbooks.
But if they had, I bet theyd sound a lot like me.
Everyone who was vegan was vegan for the animals, as far as I knew.
Besides that, I dont know that its changed that much.
There was no internet when I went vegan, so now theres a lot more information available.
Theres a lot more people going vegan and also more people stopping being vegan.
So theres a lot more ex-vegans now.
I wish everyone could just eat the way they eat and be cool with it.I dont.
[Assumes a dreamy tone.
]I wish everyone were vegan.
