Picture: squash farinata

It's not too often that someone gives me a galley of an upcoming cookbook to check out, so I felt that Crossroads by Tal Ronnen deserved a full blog review. So, here goes.

If you follow food news at all, Crossroads is the vegan cookbook you're going to be hearing a whole lot about come October when it's officially out. Tal Ronnen is chef/owner of the restaurant Crossroads in LA, probably the USA's paramount gourmet vegan restaurant. Ronnen also knows Oprah and lots of food celebrities, so I expect the book to do well regardless of quality. Fortunately, the quality is there.

The book appealed to me because Ronnen promises "vegetable-centric" cooking. Far too many vegan cookbooks are obsessed with meat and dairy substitutes; we've long needed a vegan cookbook which was aimed at people who love vegetables. Appropriately enough, the book's cuisine is "Meditteranean", including a lot of Middle-Eastern food, possibly the most vegan-friendly cuisine there is.

So, does the book deliver on its promise of "vegetable-centric" vegan recipes? Mostly. Ronnen is also the founder of Kite Hill Cheese, a vegan faux-dairy-product vendor, and he uses its products liberally through the book in a quarter to a third of the recipes. If you're vegetarian and not vegan, though, these recipes easily adapt to using the real thing.

Strangely, he also goes off the vegetable-centric road in the pasta section, where his fresh pasta recipe and almost every pasta dish is rife with tofu and Kite Hill dairy. Not sure what happened there, given that a regular Italian cookbook has vegan pasta dishes in it.

The other question, of course, is are the recipes any good? And I'm happy to report that yes, they are. Pictured above is the squash farinata in the pan; this was tasty, substantial, and kept well as leftovers.

The food, as mentioned, is Mediterranean, and a lot of that is fusion cooking. For example: Charred Okra Flatbread with Sweet Corn Puree; Balsamic-roasted Mushrooms with Toasted Marcona Almonds; Tagine Flatbread. As with other current trendy cookbooks, there is a cocktail section.

The recipes are clearly written and fully explained. Aside from Kite Hill products, they are all from-scratch cooking, including recipes for flatbread dough, tomato jam, and fresh pasta. While the recipes are complex, each step is explained and Ronnen seldom expects any specific culinary knowledge of the reader.

This is fancy-restaurant cooking though; most recipes have 12 or more ingredients, and some many more than that. You can also tell it's from California given the reliance on specialty produce which may be difficult to find elsewhere in North America. Most of the recipes are "cook to impress" recipes; weekend and not weeknight cooking.

Overall, I'd say that this cookbook is one we've been waiting for: a truly gourmet vegan cookbook which will even appeal to non-vegans. It may do for vegan cuisine what The Greens Cookbook did for vegetarian. If you are a vegan, or cook for one, you'll want to buy Crossroads this fall.

Every year we pick a new cuisine for TY Day, and this year it's Moroccan/North African. Since I don't have lots of experience with Moroccan food, that means time to hit the cookbooks! I used two I owned already and two I borrowed from the SFPL.

Moroccan by Ghillie Basan: this is a general Moroccan cookbook, with a general assortment of recipes from the standards of Moroccan food, so a few appetizers, a couple of kind of couscous, and a half-dozen tagine. The recipes are well-written and easy to follow, though, and the couple of things I've prepared from here have been good. For TY Day, I made the "carrot salad with feta" out of here, which is really more of a roasted carrot hummus. Recommended for anyone who is looking for a slim general Moroccan cookbook.

Morocco by Jeff Koehler: a much more substantial general Moroccan cookbook, with a good representation of all kinds of foods, especially tagine and side dishes. Has a moderate number of seafood dishes as well, something Ghillie Basan lacks. Spectacular photography by the author, including photos of most of the dishes, which are really helpful if you've never made them before. In comparison to Wolfert, though, Koehler's instuctions can be somewhat vague ("coin-sized pieces"). Recommended as an all-around Moroccan cookbook.

The Vegetarian Table: North Africa by Kitty Morse: despite her name, Ms. Morse is a serious North African cook, having lived in Morocco for several years. This slim cookbook gives vegetarian dishes and remakes of dishes from Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. If you're a vegetarian, this is the Moroccan cookbook for you; otherwise, you might choose one of the others. Since Morse seems to be very fond of pastries, I'm making the Fatima's Fingers from her cookbook.

The Food of Morocco by Paula Wolfert: her first cookbook was Moroccan food, and Wolfert finally returns there with this omnibus. If you want one massive cookbook which covers almost all of Moroccan food for you — including very detailed instructions for tagine and couscous — and don't care how much bookshelf space it takes, this is it. Also has extensive chapters on breads and seafood, something most Moroccan cookbooks lack. I'm making "tagine bread" and "fish tagine with creamy onion charmoula" from this cookbook.

So, four cookbooks, all recommended depending on what you're looking for.