Joy Pierson

A special thanks to Ten Speed Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As a vegan for several years, enjoying an organic and plant-based diet and lifestyle, with all the advantages-- I love discovering new sources to expand my culinary skills, as well as innovative menus and recipes for delectable tasteful dishes and pairings.

VEGAN HOLIDAY COOKING FROM CANDLE CAFÉ is beautifully packaged, with a stunning presentation of plant-based, fresh, and creative holiday recipes from the renowned Candle Café, New York’s Premier Plant-Based Restaurants.

This book is packed with rich and delicious holiday food, full of scrumptious flavor- benefiting the body, mind, and the soul! A gorgeous book, guaranteed to WOW the vegan enthusiasts, and even those who are not yet vegan; offering choices for the traditional holiday family gatherings.

Holidays do not have to be a time of over-indulging, when there are other alternatives. We do not have to sacrifice taste, as we feed our souls with deliciously designed entrees, desserts, and cocktails. VEGAN HOLIDAY COOKING FROM CANDLE CAFÉ is an ideal gift selection for your vegan friends, who enjoy entertaining and living well.

In addition to choosing the vegan lifestyle, I love design, food styling, and photography, as you can see by my Pinterest boards, and working in the hospitality industry. (Wish I could pin these-especially, Lady Day).

As an avid reader of primarily, fiction--in order for non-fiction or a cookbook to entice me, I need high-resolution imagery. WOW, this holiday charmer does not disappoint! The photography and layout of this book is stunning! Photography by Jim Franco.

I have tried a few of the recipes (a few favorites: loved the quinoa vegetable cakes, the mojo de ajo seitan with grilled peaches, roasted squash soup with almond cream and spiced pumpkin seeds, roasted brussels sprout salad with apples, cranberries, and maple-cayenne dressing, and the decadent warm apple turnovers and champagne ice cream) --- an array of indulgent, yet healthy food. Cannot wait to try them all - YUM!

Packed with ten tantalizing, mouth-watering, and inventive menus for your Super Bowl Party, Lunar New Year, Valentine’s Day, Passover, Easter Brunch, Cinco de Mayo Fiesta, 4th of July Backyard Barbeque, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve--- from the highly talented cast of the Candle trio of restaurants (Candle Café, Candle 79, and Candle Café West).

Readers will be swept away for a magical journey from this talented-winning team of chefs. They definitely know how to throw a party and pros, when it comes to entertaining and presentation. These special-occasion favorites from acclaimed vegan restaurants, are tailored for the home table, with main entrees, sides, and delightful wine and cocktail pairings.

Their commitment and passion for sustainability and healing the planet with food and love, is reflective throughout the pages of this beautiful book, you will treasurer for years to come! Equipped with a helpful resource guide, acknowledgements, and more about the authors.

Relax, pour yourself a drink, and savor page after page of deliciously designed recipes, making you the perfect host and hostess!


JOY PIERSON is co-owner of the Candle Cafe, Candle Cafe West, and Candle 79, and coauthor of The Candle Cafe Cookbook and Candle 79 Cookbook. Certified in nutritional counseling, Joy has appeared on the Today show, Good Day New York, CBS News This Morning, The Food Network's TV Food Diners, and NPR.

ANGEL RAMOS is executive chef at Candle 79 and Candle Café West. His recipes have been featured in the New York Times and Vegetarian Times, and he helped develop the nationally distributed Candle Café Frozen Entrees line. In 2010, Angel was named the VegNews Chef of the Year. Pastry chef and kitchen manager

JORGE PINEDA developed the nationally distributed Candle Café Desserts and Candle Chef's Cuisine for Whole Foods Markets, and his pastries have been deemed the "Best Vegan Desserts in America" by the Los Angeles Times.… (more)

To read this post with photos, please head on over to my blog.

A Celebration of Vegan Food

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review through the Blogging for Books program.)

As with many renowned vegan eateries, NYC’s Candle Café is a restaurant I’ve coveted from afar, salivating over the many mouth-watering dishes photographed, enjoyed, and shared by vegan friends and acquaintances on Instagram, tumblr, and other social media outlets. (I have five dogs who I love to pieces – but they kind of put a damper on my travel plans.) Luckily, the burgeoning vegan cookbook market – and the increasing number of cookbooks released by popular vegan restaurants, such as Candle Café, The Chicago Vegan Diner, and Jivamuktea Café – has made it possible to enjoy even the most upscale menus from the comfort of your own kitchen. Hasta la vista, age of vicarious living!

Candle Café ups the ante with Vegan Holiday Cooking, a special cookbook chock full of holiday-themed menus. While this isn’t the first vegan holiday cookbook on the market (there’s also Vegan Holiday Kitchen by Nava Atlas and Susan Voisin, as well as Zel Allen’s Vegan for the Holidays), Vegan Holiday Cooking is unique in its focus: rather than concentrating solely on the “big” holiday season – Thanksgiving through New Year’s – Pierson, Ramos, and Pineda extend their celebration across the calendar.

The book includes ten menus for a variety of occasions, including the Super Bowl; the Lunar New Year; Valentine’s Day; Passover; Easter; Cinco de Mayo; the Fourth of July; Thanksgiving; Christmas; and New Year’s Eve. Each menu receives roughly the same amount of attention – the 4th of July and Christmas both merit 18 pages of coverage! – resulting in a holiday cookbook with great depth and variety.

For example, while the Thanksgiving menu features a number of traditional, hearty fall comfort foods (Roasted Squash Soup, Wild Rice and Cornbread Stuffing, Pecan Pie with Cinnamon Ice Cream), we also get a taste of Mexican foods via the Cinco de Mayo menu (Spanish Rice and Black Beans, Tempeh Fajitas, Crispy Black Bean Tacos), as well as Asian dishes courtesy of the Lunar New Year (Scallion Pancakes with Homemade Kimchi and Wasabi Aioli, Steamed Vegetable Dumplings with Ginger-Soy Dipping Sauce, Miso-Ginger Braised Tofu over Bamboo Rice Pilaf). And we can’t forget the Passover Seder, which features a variety of veganized Jewish dishes.

I can’t lie; I’m a little disappointed that my own favorite holiday (Halloween!) didn’t make the cut...especially when a technically-not-a-holiday (the Super Bowl! say what now?) did. Otherwise I found myself pleasantly surprised by the diversity of dishes and celebrations included here.

As for aesthetics, Vegan Holiday Cooking is gorgeous cookbook. In addition to the swanky cheese and wine spread pictured on the cover, the inside front and back covers feature a sophisticated burgundy print which highlights a book blurb (on the front) and conversion chart (back). The book is full-color, and each menu has its own festive color theme. Also included are a number of gourmet food photos, though some readers will be disappointed to find that not every recipe is accompanied by a photo. (I personally don’t mind, but to each her own.)

Most of the required ingredients are common and easy to find in the US – though the Jewish and Asian menus may require a trip to a specialty store. Likewise, items like Ener-G Egg Replacer, silken tofu, and agave nectar might be hard to find except in a natural/health foods store – or online.

I tried almost a dozen dishes in preparation for this review, with varying levels of success.

First, let's start with the soups, which are always my favorite this time of year!

The Roasted Butternut Squash Soup with Almond Cream and Spiced Pumpkin Seeds proved an excellent use of my homegrown butternut squash (some of the last of the season, mind you). The soup is as delicious and savory as it is easy to make - but I wish I could say the same of the Almond Cream! Mine didn't come out nearly as light and fluffy as that in the book; it was more of a paste than a cream. Even so, it tasted great; I ended up mixing the extras right in with the soup rather than plopping it on top. I didn't have any pumpkin seeds on hand, but pecans subbed in nicely.

Also on the menu: Cauliflower and Fennel Soup, which (again) was both belly-warming and oh-so-simple to make (no fresh fennel bulbs? no worries! try a mix of seeds and dried fennel instead!); and Roasted Red Pepper Soup with Tofu Dumplings Potato Gnocchi, which just might be my favorite soup of the bunch. Roasted red peppers are the best and, if you're in a hurry, you can simplify this dish by swapping out the homemade dumplings for store-bought gnocchi instead!

Speaking of roasted red peppers, the Homemade Pappardelle with Spinach, Portabello Mushrooms, and Roasted Red Pepper Sauce is to die for. A nice change from traditional marinara sauce, roasted red pepper sauce somehow manages to be both sweet and smoky at the same time. One of my New Year's resolutions is to swap out the tomatoes for red peppers more often! Again, you can hack this dish by using store-bought pasta in place of Homemade Pappardelle (which is what I did here). Easy peasy!

And while we're talking about easy dishes, can I just say a word about the Make Your Own Chili Bowl? The base is solid, and Pierson & Co. recommend a slew of add-ins for maximum party potential. (This one's a Super Bowl recipe, natch.) I especially love that the recipe uses a mix of lentils and beans, which is a little easier on my tummy than an all-bean chili mix.

Sadly, another Super Bowl dish didn't fare quite as well: the dough for the titular wheat balls in the Wheat Ball Heroes just didn't want to hold together. I tried tinkering with the mix, adding a splash of water here and a little extra oil there. It helped a bit, but just barely. Crumbly balls, blurg! Even so, the heroes weren't half-bad, and the leftover balls made an excellent topping for my on-the-fly pita pizzas!

The Sweet Potato Latkes - a 50/50 blend of Russet and sweet potatoes - were afflicted with a similar problem. This time around, no amount of adjustments could coax the dough into clinging together, so instead of latkes, I made baked sweet potato hash browns. Tasty, but not latkes! I repurposed the leftovers for a tofu scramble which, next to pizza toppings, is my favorite way to dispense with extra foodstuffs.

Also on the potato front, I had more luck with the Potato Gratin and Sweet Potato and Apricot Tzimmes, both of which went over like gangbusters. (Though the latter makes an almost comical amount of veggies; unless you're cooking for an actual party, you may want to cut it in half!)

The Quinoa Vegetable Cakes are supposed to be enjoyed as a sort of cake-on-the-side, but naturally I stuffed them between two slices of whole wheat bread, slopped some Vegenaise on there, and called 'em veggie burgers. So, so good! These required more time in the oven, and at a higher temp than recommended: instead of ten minutes at 350F, ten minutes on each side at 400F.

And for dessert: Snowball Cookies! The cookies are aces, though the chocolate sauce did prove a little problematic: not only does the recipe make at least three times as much sauce as is needed for drizzling, but it's quite thin and never really sets - not even in the fridge. I ended up adding a ton (okay, a quarter cup) of cornstarch to thicken it up. The cookies were a little easier to handle this way, but still somewhat sticky.

While I found a few new favorites in Vegan Holiday Cooking (e.g., the Roasted Red Pepper Sauce; the Roasted Red Pepper Soup; the Quinoa Vegetable Cakes), I was surprised by how many of the recipes required adjustments (the chocolate sauce in the Snowball Cookies; the bake time on the Quinoa Vegetable Cakes) or just straight-up failed altogether (the Sweet Potato Latkes; the Wheat Balls, kinda sorta). Although I enjoyed the cookbook as a whole, I'm docking it one point for the misses and near-misses I encountered.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2014/12/11/vegan-holiday-cooking-from-candle-cafe-by-j...… (more)

This book made me so very hungry. The pictures were exquisite, the captions, mouthwatering, and the selection superb!. If you have meat eating friends who are skeptical of the vegan lifestyle, then this is the book to convince them otherwise! Make them a recipe or two from here and, while they may not convert, they will definitely understand that plant based meals can be tasty, satisfying, and totally worthwhile!

I knew the book was going to be a winner when I opened it and saw that there was a forward from Alicia Silverstone and Woody Harrelson in the beginning. If they were fans, how could I not be!? Since I live no where near New York, I can't go visit one of the Candle Cafe locations to sample the food so I'll have to rely on this handy cookbook to give me a good taste of what is offered in their kitchen. Each chapter focuses on a different holiday (Valentine's Day, Superbowl, Sedar, Thanksgiving, etc.) and has several different, drinks, appetizers, main courses, and desserts to choose from. Not all of them are cheap, and many of them are seasonal (depending on what fresh fruits and veggies are available), but even so, there is plenty to choose from! I have bookmarked the scallion pancakes with homemade kimchi and wasabi aioli (it's a little labor intensive but looks and sounds soo delicious!), rosemary portabello steaks with celeriac puree, cabernet reduction, and brussels sprouts (the picture was literally mouthwatering, I even had a dream about it!), chile-crusted corn (I plan on trying this one tomorrow!), and roasted squash soup with almond cream and spiced pumpkin seeds.

This isn't a cookbook for beginners so I plan on starting small. It is however, easily a staple for any vegan kitchen. I can't wait to get started on these recipes!

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books in return for my honest, unbiased opinion.… (more)

I am not a vegetarian let alone a vegan, but I really like this cookbook. I often cook for vegetarian friends and this book gives me a whole new set of ideas. These are intended to be festive foods so the recipes are nicely elaborate and they are paired with interesting of drinks and snacks.

Where I live I cannot get seitan, which is the featured protein in many of these recipes but there are plenty of other main dish recipes to try and meat protein can be used in place of seitan.

One odd thing that is not explained in the text is that the authors always parboil tempeh before use. I had not seen this recommendation before and wondered why they do it. Most people just slice tempeh and cook. When I looked up tempeh cooking online one source said parboiling makes the tempeh softer. Well, ok. But I probably never would do it.

I received a review copy of "Vegan Holiday Cooking from Candle Café: Celebratory Menus and Recipes from New York's Premier Plant-Based Restaurants" by Joy Pierson, Angel Ramos, Jorge Pineda (Ten Speed Press) through NetGalley.com.… (more)