True to Your Roots: Vegan Recipes to Comfort and Nourish You

by Carla Kelly

Once the lonely, unattractive kin of sexier, more popular produce, root vegetables (along with tubers and rhizomes) finally get the love and attention they deserve in this inventive and far-reaching vegan cookbook. Instead of heavy stews and soups—the most common uses for root vegetables, in which they play mild-mannered backup to meat-centric ingredients—author Carla Kelly lets roots, tubers, and rhizomes shine on their own in recipes that include lighter versions of those traditional stews and soups as well as juices, salads, desserts, and ethnically inspired entrees such as potato, sauerkraut, and dill pierogies and sweet potato and pinto bean enchiladas. The book includes a great collection of raw bites and sides, as well as information on the wide variety of root vegetables available, including what to do with those mysterious specimens in the market such as kohlrabi, cassava, celeriac, and Jerusalem artichokes. There's also imaginative recipes that find new ways to use the more familiar parsnips, turnips, beets, and potatoes. Be the cool cook on the block and jump on the root vegetable bandwagon before the rest of the neighborhood does with help from Carla's amazing cookbook. Full-color throughout. Carla Kelly is a vegan blogger ( Year of the Vegan ) and home cook. She is the author of three previous books, the most recent of which was Vegan al Fresco .

Genres: Cookbooks

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2015

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads' database with this name.

From publisher website: "Carla Kelly is an experienced cook and baker, having started well before the age of ten. As the eldest of five children, she often made baked treats and dinner for her family. She has been a vegan for over five years and a vegetarian for fifteen more before that, and has developed recipes to suit herself and her family on this journey. She writes the popular blog The Year of the Vegan (VeganYear.blogspot.com) and lives in British Columbia with her family." There are also facebook pages for books http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vegan-S... and http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vegan-B...

Reviews

[Kathleen Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eat your veggies! What is a root vegetable you ask? It is the enlarged fleshy root of a plant used as a vegetable, e.g., a carrot, rutabaga, or beet. The focus of this book is about using and cooking with root veggies. The art of using the whole vegetable, where the recipes in the book utilize the whole plant, mostly plants that grow underground.
 
There is the introduction to the book gives a detailed description of Basic Botany, how to choose and store root vegetables, growing your vegetables, how to use the vegetable root to tip, about the ingredients used in the recipes and what kind of equipment needed and then a bit about allergies and the icons used in the book
 
The sections are as follows; recipes for breakfasts, brunches and baking, Juice recipes, starters and apples, soups, salads, sides, entrees, condiments and decadent desserts. A little something for everyone. I did find the recipe for carrot & herb sausages, I never thought that you could make sausages out of root veggies.
 
Going through the recipes in this book is eye opening, if you wanted to be a vegan and want a variety of foods using root vegetables, this book is for you. Easy instructions, colorful pictures and great detail make this an addition to any kitchen. If you are a vegan this book is perfect and if you are not, what a way to get you to eat those veggies!
 

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to eat vegan, but so often that involves either compromising taste or investing more time than I really have to spare. If you’re like me—or if you’re just looking to broaden your cooking repertoire—you’ll appreciate True to Your Roots for offering delicious, not-too-fussy recipes.

The chapters of the book offer recipe ideas for the entire day. I’m a salad/side dish/main dish kind of cook, and Kelly gives me plenty of options. These include Carrot and Walnut Ravioli with Carrot Top Pesto; Kohlrabi and Chickpea Burgers; Water Chestnut and Chestnut-Stuffed Tofu.

She also includes breakfast, juices, and desserts, as well as starters and condiments. Each chapter offers a dozen or more recipes, so even if, like me, you focus on a particular meal or type of dish, True to Your Roots will offer you many possibilities.

I particularly appreciate Kelly’s emphasis on root vegetables. I find it easy to cook delicious, meat-free meals in the summer, but doing the same thing in winter feels daunting. By emphasizing variety Kelly demonstrates that root-based meals can go well beyond the oven roasts and purées that most of us are familiar with.

[Teresa McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carla Kelly's newest cookbook focuses on root vegetables from a vegan perspective. She shares recipes across cuisines, providing vegan takes on familiar dishes, while taking root vegetable cooking in new directions. I especially like her emphasis on root to tip cooking and run downs on less familiar vegetables.

You can find my full review here:

http://onewetfoot.ca/2015/11/11/holid...

And you can enter to win a copy until December 17/15.