Mississippi Vegan
by Timothy Pakron
At a glance: Unique perspective, fresh, local, and seasonal food-focused, exquisitely written, lovely photography.
Target Audience: The newly vegan, fresh foodies, Southern cuisine curious.
Recipes tested:
Golden Garlic Biscuits (p. 59)
Pan-fried Artichoke Heart Salad (p.121)
Mushroom Bacon (p. 254)
Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 228)
Review:
“Now I know what you’re thinking… ‘Vegan Southern Food? Yeah right!’ Let me paint the picture: okra, sweet potatoes, watermelon, black-eyed peas, collard greens, peanuts, rice, blueberries, blackberries, and pecans. There is no doubt in my mind that all of these beautiful ingredients are intrinsically Southern, in particular intrinsic to Mississippi.” (p. 19)
A photographer and recipe developer by trade, Timothy Pakron could certainly add food-writer to his list! There are so many things to love about this book, but an introduction and ingredient explanations that I actually want to read repeatedly?! That’s a new one for me. Every vegan cookbook author has a compulsion to spend pages and pages discussing why they are vegan, and believe me, I understand! But what Pakron does in a breathtaking way is to weave a general love of plants, local eating, flavor memories into a broader discussion about what it is to cook plant-based and vegan food. His chapter on ingredient descriptions is surprisingly long but compelling in a way I have yet to see in many cookbooks.
Touting the Golden Garlic Biscuits as “what they serve in heaven,” I couldn’t resist giving this recipe a try. In my previous life working at a restaurant, I once had to make biscuits for brunch from scratch and misread the recipe… I’ll spare you the details but let’s just say that they were inedible and leave it at that. Thankfully, this recipe was extremely quick and easy to execute, even for a pastry novice like myself, and just as delicious as promised!
The pan-fried Artichoke Heart Salad also caught my eye because even though there are a few things I needed to buy specifically for this recipe that I didn’t typically have at home, it is essentially a citrusy and salty saute with garlic and onions, but it was so worth the extra purchases. Served with some baked tempeh and a fresh salad, and you’ve got a pretty easy and delicious way to change-up an otherwise simple staple meal.
Pakron puts a painstaking amount of detail into his recipe for the perfect mushroom bacon. For such a short list of 5 ingredients, it’s 4 pages of instructions and photographs! Perhaps a bit overdone if it takes that level of instruction just to bake mushroom slices, I am not sure that most people would feel inclined to attempt it. That said, if you err on the side of “under-baking” the shroom slices, you’ll still end up with crispy mushrooms in a quick and tasty marinade. Also, I would note that if you leave them slightly under-crisp, they are easier to flash-bake and re-crisp if you have leftovers.
His chocolate chip cookies are actually titled “Highly Sophisticated Chocolate Chip Cookies” are maybe a bit too ingredient heavy, a lot of flavors trying to blend together into a cookie that I found to actually be a bit too crisp. The 2 tablespoon portion size of dough was a welcome change to most 1 tablespoon recipes (it’s just too small!), and I’m very excited by the now-classic dark chocolate / rosemary / salt combination, and the Southern touch of toasted pecans is certainly welcome. But as he disclaims in the intro, these cookies “may not be for everyone.”
I was pleasantly surprised by this book, although I should have anticipated the high overall quality based on Pakron’s prolific online presence between his personal recipes, sponsored recipes, lifestyle videos, and home cooking videos. He clearly loves his world of food and what a dreamy world it is!
The key ingredients may not be things you always have on-hand, but his focus on seasonality and fresh ingredients is inspiring and logical. Why not re-think our home cooking to be in-tune with the seasons?
I also can’t wait to make his gumbo!