Hot Damn and Hell Yeah / Dirty South Cookbook

Book Reviews | Mar 11th, 2007

No Image
Sorry Folks, No Image Is Here.

Author: Ryan Splint & Vanessa
Publisher: Microcosm Publishing
Genre: Cooking
Pages: 128
Retail Price: 6.00
Buy on Amazon.com link

This is a split/flipside cookbook, both featuring recipes for the gluttonous, non-dieting vegan. Hot Damn focuses mostly on Mexican cooking (Mexican being one of the more vegan-friendly cuisines out there), along with some curries, and The Dirty South Cookbook has a lot of down-home, deep-fried southern recipes. Both cookbooks contain a lot of comfort food, which is understandable + if I were a vegan too, the last thing I’d want is a thousand recipes whose main ingredient is carrot sticks or grass or twigs or whatever the hell it is that vegans eat.

Being a carnivore and a decent chef in my own right, I haven’t tried any of the recipes, though I might take a stab at some of the desserts. As expected, the meat substitution recipes sound disgusting and inconvenient, but I guess that’s the price you pay for not enjoying delicious animal flesh.

Hot Damn’s recipes are presented clearly, but written with an annoying country western twang. Dirty South’s recipes, on the other hand, are written clearly, but presented in a distracting cut n’ paste zine style. Hot Damn also includes introductory remarks before every recipe; Dirty South doesn’t provide any descriptive information, so I don’t even know what some of its recipes even are. (What the heck is berbere, niter kebbeh, and Martha’s Rub?) Otherwise, the recipes look good – I don’t see any cooking faux pas, and it’s obvious the authors know their way around the kitchen.

Some recipes that caught my eye: Turnip Stew, Mushroom Gravy, Country-Style Biscuits, Pumpkin Soup, Vietnamese-Style Curry, Black Bean Chili, Cranberry and Caramel Date Bars, Espresso Cake, Chocolate Kahula Cake.

Bottom Line: Vegan cookbook with ‘tude.
Favorite Part(s):
Overall Rating:

Topics:

, , , , ,