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.

I've updated what is now the broadest review of vegetarian breakfast sausage that I know of, and given it a permanent link. I recently tried both Amy's and Sol Cuisine; read all of them on my Snausage Review page.

updated December 2023

As a non-meat-eater, I'm not partial to "fake meat" as a rule. If I wanted to eat meat, I'd eat meat; I don't need a wheat gluten simulation of duck to make me happy. The exception is veggie breakfast sausages (or as we call them, "snausages") for which I have a weakness, mostly because sausage isn't about the meat, it's about the spices. Anyway, I've pretty much had all the brands, so some ratings. Note that I haven't eaten actual pork sausage since 1985, so don't expect any comparisons to real meat.

MorningStar Farms Original or Hot Patties: the ubiquitous supermarket brand, vegetarian but not vegan. The "hot" ones are pleasantly spicy, but either variety could stand to have more interesting spicing. Texture is clearly TVP-based. The best thing about these is the name; as my sweetie points out, they must be made with "Seitan" (English major humor). Not vegan. B

MorningStar Farms Links: The same as the patties, only in link shape. The only decent link-shaped snausages left. They're better if you overcook them a bit; a little char adds needed flavor. Not vegan. B

Moringstar Farms Vegan Patties: Morningstar introduced a vegan variant, and not in a good way. These patties have a mushy texture and leave fibrous reside on the tongue. It's like they took their vegetarian patties and just left the eggs and wheat gluten out, without replacing them. D

Boca: (unobtainium) in my opinion the best of the veggie sausage lot. Links only, and only one type, but that one type is heavily seasoned with a variety of spices (including garlic, sage and oregano), and reasonably good however you cook them. Which is why, of course, they are no longer made. A

Gimme Lean: a play on "Jimmie Dean" these veggie sausages come in "chubs" which you need to slice into patties yourself, like "real" pork sausage. They've been "seasoned" with nitrates to give them that "real pork smell", which does make them taste "authentically" like bargain-basement cheap pork sausage of dubious ingredients and safety. D-

Trader Joe's Patties: these used to be pretty good, slightly better than MorningStar patties, but then TJ's switched suppliers to one who doesn't believe in seasoning their TVP and wheat gluten except with salt, and I'm pretty convinced uses cardboard as a filler. These taste like suffering. F

Quorn: Unlike all of the others, Quorn (a European brand) is not made from TVP and gluten: it's made from some kind of ground-up fungus. This gives it a nice mushroomy flavor, not particulary like meat but pleasant on its own. The links have a much better texture than the patties, which are a bit dry. B

Field Roast Apple Maple Breakfast Sausage: these are small and chubby like Vienna sausages. Good texture, but they taste more like sweet potato casserole than sausage, and they come covered in sticky goo. D

Amy's: you'd think the Queen Bee of vegetarian foods would do a better job on veggie sausages, but you'd be wrong. These are basically just Amy's Veggie Burgers, extruded into sausage shape. D-

Sol Cuisine: if I'd noticed that these were "wheat and gluten free" I wouldn't have bought them. The lack of gluten makes for a mushy texture, and they don't have enough spices. Otherwise not bad. C-

LightLife Sausage Links: it's lovely to find a vegan sausage maker who believes in using real spices. Too bad they're not any good at it. The links taste overwhelmingly of sage; their larger sausages beat you over the head with fennel. C-

Gardein Breakfast Sausage Patties: not bad, a lot like the original Morningstar Farms patties, only with a bit of herbs and better texture. Probably the best general supermarket brand. B

Home made snausages: given the ridiculous price of veggie sausage — somehow TVP is cheap filler in a real burger, but becomes expensive when in a box by itself — a number of times I've made my own from mushrooms, onions, wheat gluten powder, TVP, whole garlic and lots of spices. Pretty good, but high-effort and I've never quite gotten the texture right. Also, I can only do patties this way, not links. B+

Hilary's Spicy Veggie Sausage: vegan, gluten-free, soy-free, nut-free, corn-free, everything-free, these taste about how you'd expect: like cardboard fiber fill with a hint of Tabasco. D-

Beyond Breakfast Sausage, Spicy: like other Beyond Meat products, these have a better texture than most of their competitors, and even give off a convincing amount of rendered fat when fried. But the "spicy" is just hot without any particular pepper flavor; I'd have liked more seasonings to go with the capsaicin. C

Impossible Breakfast Patties: Very meaty, solid patties that don't have the vegetable fat of their Beyond competitors. These have more "heft" than most of the snausages on this list, and are probably meant for biscuit sandwiches. Their main flaw is that they taste overwhelmingly of fennel; if they could fix the spicing, they would move into first place. C+

Meatless Farm Veggie Sausage Links/Patties: snausages always have to balance between taste and texture, because you really can't have both. MF picks a middle-of-the-road route; they're not as "realistic" textured as Beyond, but they have a better overall flavor. Note that the patties are intended to go on sausage biscuits, and as such are a bit large for serving alongside eggs. C+.

Jack & Annie's Savory Breakfast Sausage: You know that eventually someone needed to try making snausages with jackfruit, and this is that brand. These are mainly meant for sausage sandwiches, so they're wide and thin. They're also dense and chewy, in a "meaty" way, but very bland. C-

Nature's Fynd Breakfast Patties: the brand advertises how it is a fungal protein instead of legume-based, and that's completely believeable, because these patties taste like mushroom croquettes. What they don't taste like is sausage. It would have helped if they'd added any spices of any kind, but apparently that would interfere with the "natural fermentation". Suggest using these as filling for mushroom pirogi instead. D

Let's face it, nonstick pans require replacement every few years. No matter how good the pan is, the Teflon coating eventually becomes damaged and then it's just an aluminum pan. For that reason, it never pays to spend too much on a nonstick pan. On the other hand, I want something which will last a little longer and will stand up to my sometimes abusive cooking. Enter Vollrath.

We were introduced to Vollrath nonstick cookware by a huckster at the Alameda County Fair. It's restaurant industry cookware, which is generally a good bet for value-for-dollar, and also for sturdiness. All-Clad is nice and well-made, but let's face it, you're paying a hefty premium for the pretty.

Since we didn't buy it from the huckster (mainly because we had a loooong walk back to the car), I had to go shopping and was immediately confused by the variety of designs and nonstick coatings offered by Vollrath. Fortunately, I found this sales video which explained it for me. TLDR: you want the CeramiGuard II, which is their best coating, since it has ground-up ceramic material in the Teflon to guard against scraping by utensils. That's what "ceramic coating" means; there's no real non-stick ceramic substance, it's just Teflon with ceramic protection.

So I bought a 10" and decided to put it through its paces.

First things first: the pan is certified by the NSF, which means it can be used in a real restaurant kitchen, for what that's worth. Made in the USA, anyway, which counts for more. The other thing I'll say is that this is somewhat roomier and significantly heavier than my old 10" pan. I have no idea why it says 7in on the bottom of the pan, since this is definitely a 10" pan.

The "Cool Handle II" is a pretty solid bar of cast aluminum with a grip of silicone, good up to 450F in the oven. And you don't want to put nonstick in an oven over 450F anyway, since that destroys the Teflon. The handle is solid and easy to grip — and does, in fact, stay cool — and hangs easily on my potrack. However, it's also the only negative for this pan: the handle is long and heavy enough to make the pan a bit "tippy" when empty. That could be more of a problem with the 8" pan.

So what to make to run a nonstick pan through its paces? An omlette of course! I thought about doing a rolled omlette, but the 10" was a bit small for that so I decided to make an American half-moon omlette with mushrooms.

First, I fried up the mushrooms and the shallots. With the brand-new nonstick surface the mushrooms were like skaters on a newly laid ice rink, sliding around at the sightest touch.

This is the pan after the mushrooms. No washing necessary for the eggs.

The eggs sizzled right up. It was interesting poking holes to let the raw egg through to the bottom; the eggs slid around and I ended up using a 2nd spatula to hold them in place.

Now the filling: fried mushrooms and shallots, Emmenthaler cheese, and parsley. I like to put in the filling while there's still some gooey egg on top, so that the entire omlette fuses together.

Fold over and cook for a bit to set the eggs and fuse with the filling. Then flip to make sure the top is nice and brown. Look at that nice, even browning on the eggs; you can see that the cast aluminum of the pan is conducting heat well. I'd been a bit worried about the lack of a "disk" on the bottom of the pan, but clearly it's not needed. Now, will the omlette slide out of the pan without any help from a spatula?

Indeed it will. So, Vollrath nonstick pans: highly recommended.

Oh, and a recipe:

Mushroom and Swiss Cheese Omlette

• 3 large eggs
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 medium shallot, minced
• 4-6oz crimini or white mushrooms, sliced
• 2 Tbs minced parsley
• 2 oz Emmenthaler or similar Swiss cheese, grated.
• olive oil for pan
• salt & pepper for seasoning

Beat the eggs with the 1/4 tsp salt. Let sit.

Drizzle your nonstick pan with a couple teaspoons of olive oil. Turn on medium-high heat and sprinkle the minced shallot into the pan. When the shallots are sizzling, add the sliced mushrooms. Fry until mushrooms are soft and starting to brown, around 7 minutes. Scrape into a bowl and wipe the pan clean.

Drizzle some more olive oil into the pan and turn up high heat. When the pan is very hot (the olive oil will run like water), dump in the eggs. Cook, folding edges and scraping holes to get most of the liquid egg set.

When the eggs are just a bit gooey on top, cover half the egg round with the fillings, including the mushrooms, cheese, and parsley. Fold the other half over the top (this takes practice and a wide, thin spatula). Lower heat to medium, and cook for another 2 minutes. Then flip the omlette and cook on its other side for another 2 minutes.

Slide out of the pan, with whichever side is the most presentable on top. Serves 1 or 2 people, depending on how hungry they are and how many other things there are for breakfast.