How two vegan chefs find inspiration in a meat-centric world
I’ve made no secret of my affffffffffffection for the cooking of Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby, the couple behind Vedge, the Philadelphia bastion of vegetable-focused fifine dining, and its more casual sibling, V Street. As executive chef, Landau coaxes powerful flflavors and textures out of the humblest produce, while Jacoby brings similar pop to her desserts (not to mention drinks).
At V Street, the focus is on street food, found at places around the world with “lawn furniture and picnic benches, little stands and shacks with smoke billowing out the roof, and sand floors and dirt flfloors, where you can pick up the food with your bare hands, douse it with hot sauce, and wash it all down with a cold beer sipped right from the bottle,” as they write in their new book, “V Street: 100 Globe-Hopping Plates on the Cutting Edge of Vegetable Cooking” (William Morrow, 2016).
The book aims to help readers bring those flflavors home, sug gesting almost two dozen pantry staples that can span various cuisines and including shopping lists for seven types of ethnic markets. And that’s before you even get to the recipes, which include periperi tofu, kung pao string beans, Korean fried-tempeh tacos and more.
As you can see, Landau and Jacoby aren’t looking for authenticity: After all, as vegans they are often adapting traditionally meaty dishes into something that captures the spirit of a place, without the animal products. I talked to them about the new book, traveling as vegans and more. Edited excerpts follow:
Question: How do you seek out vegan food without becoming those annoying American travelers who want to make every thing about them and their needs — something I struggle with, frankly.
Answer: Landau: We do a ton of research. In a lot of cultures and cuisines, the seeming vegetarian dishes are cooked with some kind of meat or stock, so we have to be very careful. We ask a lot of questions. It doesn’t always go our way. In the Azores, they have a di sh called cozido, a stew they make by burying vegetables and meat and fifish and cooking it all day. So we went to this restaurant in the morning and tried to communicate with them in our broken Spanish/ Portuguese, saying, “We just want the vegetables, no meat, no meat.” But that night when we started eating it, we realized there were indeed little bits of meat in it. They cooked it all together, then served us just the vegetables we wanted.
Jacoby: Sometimes it’s a language thing. In South Korea, someone in the hotel wrote us a card that we took to a restaurant, and we had the most amazing tasting menu, all vegan. But it’s also about understanding not just the ingredients but the process. For the cozido, we thought it would be our own little pot that would be submerged, but they cook it all together. It’s a matter of being as prepared as possible, but we’re not going to lose our minds if everything doesn’t go according to plan.
Q: What are your sources of inspiration for dishes from places you haven’t traveled to? How do you nail it?
A: Landau: We want to be inspired by world cultures, not make what we say are authentic versions of dishes in places we’ve
This fiery, funky dish is called soondubu jjigae in Korean.
You can find gochujang in Asian markets and some large supermarkets.
Adapted from “V Street: 100 Globe-Hopping Plates on the Cutting Edge of Vegetable Cooking,” by Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby (William Morrow Cookbooks, 2016). never been. Do you really need to go there to experience it, especially if you can’t eat it because it’s not ve g a n? Pe o pl e who l ove falafel and consider themselves falafel afic ionados have probably never eaten falafel in Israel. It’s about knowing what tastes good, what you like, how you cook, how you work. A lot of what cut it into 1-inch cubes if desired.
Ladle the stew over the tofu. Garnish each portion with the scallions and sesame seeds. Serve hot.
Nutrition (based on 6): 180 calories, 9 g protein, 19 g carbohydrates, 8 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 830 mg sodium, 3 g dietary fiber, 12 g sugar