Crossroads: Extraordinary Recipes from the Restaurant That Is Reinventing Vegan Cuisine

Product Description “A new kind of flavor-first vegan cooking. . . . Stunning.” —Food & Wine “The Best Cookbook Gifts for Vegans” —Vice “Best Food Books of the Year” —USA Today Reinventing plant-based eating is what Tal Ronnen is all about. At his Los Angeles restaurant, Crossroads, the menu is vegan, but there are no soybeans or bland seitan to be found. He and his executive chef, Scot Jones, turn seasonal vegetables, beans, nuts, and grains into sophisticated Mediterranean fare—think warm bowls of tomato-sauced pappardelle, plates of spicy carrot salad, and crunchy flatbreads piled high with roasted vegetables. In Crossroads, an IACP Cookbook Award finalist, Ronnen teaches readers to make his recipes and proves that the flavors we crave are easily replicated in dishes made without animal products. With accessible, unfussy recipes, Crossroads takes plant-based eating firmly out of the realm of hippie health food and into a cuisine that fits perfectly with today’s modern palate. The recipes are photographed in sumptuous detail, and with more than 100 of them for weeknight dinners, snacks and appetizers, special occasion meals, desserts, and more, this book is an indispensable resource for healthy, mindful eaters everywhere. Review “A new kind of flavor-first vegan cooking. . . . Stunning.” —Food Wine “Redefines vegan cooking.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution “If you can't get a reservation at LA's premier vegan fine dining hot spot Crossroads Kitchen, you can at least learn to cook its incredible dishes at home thanks to this cookbook from chef Tal Ronnen. This is pretty much the best vegan food in LA, meaning it's pretty much the best vegan food anywhere, from warm kale and artichoke dip to acorn squash ravioli with black garlic butter sauce.” —Vice, The Best Cookbook Gifts for Vegans “Flavorful Mediterranean-inspired recipes that take vegetables to creative new heights.” —Houston Chronicle “Sophisticated vegan recipes . . . that even carnivores will love.” —Eater LA “Teach[es] even non-chefs how to make vegan culinary magic in their own kitchen.” —Well + Good “If you’re eating from the new Crossroads cookbook by acclaimed chef Tal Ronnen, you’re eating some of the best, most inventive, freshest and satisfying vegan food on the planet.” —Food Republic “Tal Ronnen’s food philosophy isn’t unusual for a chef of his caliber. It also isn’t complicated. Simply put: taste above all. And then you realize he’s vegan, an approach to eating that too often has been defined by foods so virtuous they taste worse than the packaging they come in. Except that’s not Ronnen’s game. For him, it doesn’t matter if the food is raw, organic, vegetarian, vegan, local, gluten-free, animal-free, free range or free spirit. If it doesn’t taste great, he isn’t interested. . . . His main courses center around vegetables that aren’t disguised as burgers or steaks or other meaty dishes. Rather, they deliver savory, meaty flavors on their own power, things like roasted shiitake mushrooms that pack in crispy bacon-esque flavor in a salad or pureeing yellow tomatoes into a creamy bearnaise sauce.” —Associated Press “This beautifully photographed collection of 100 Mediterranean-inspired recipes captures the spirit of [Ronnen's] restaurant, and shows how sophisticated vegan cuisine can be in the hands of someone who is trained in classical French cooking. But these aren't overly complicated chef recipes with long lists of unfamiliar ingredients. And these aren't dishes centered on faux meats or tofu. Instead, these are dishes that put vegetables front and center, showing how glorious vegetables can be." —Portland Oregonian “Carnivores and vegans and everyone in between will find Crossroads to be an irreplaceable resource for healthful eating. . . . We’ve never seen vegan dishes as universally flavorful.” —Natural Solutions “This beautifully illustrated book, dense with recipes that combine flavors in unexpected ways, is destined to be one of the mos