Vegan Holiday Cooking from Candle Café: Celebratory Menus and Recipes from New York’s Premier Plant-Based Restaurants

In the third cookbook from this vegan, sustainable restaurant (Candle 79 Cookbook, The Candle Café Cookbook), Chefs Pierson, Ramos, and Piñeda tackle a very specific type of problem: holiday cooking. Broken down into 10 distinct menus for 10 specific holidays, this book uses festive food as the window through which to experience the height of vegan cooking. From major American holidays such as the Fourth of July or Thanksgiving, to more ethnic celebrations like the Passover Seder and Cinco de Mayo, the reader can rip a menu off the page or mix and match to create a distinct flavor. Despite the obvious pitfall associated with meat alternatives or vegetables, unique flavors appear throughout this cookbook’s pages. For example, “seitan & tempeh fingers with sweet mustard dipping sauce” and jalapeno cornbread sticks offer pungent notes while “sweet potato latkes with almond crème fraîche” and “mâche & endive salad with creamy avocado vinaigrette” cater to a subtler, more classic taste. This book will inspire home cooks to add zing and zest to their vegan recipes. (Sept.)