Street Vegan: Recipes and Dispatches from The Cinnamon Snail Food Truck: A Cookbook

Paul's wife here and all I can say is WOW! so glad I found Mr. Sobel's book. His recipes are playful (ginger island tofu with coconut mashed yams and fried ginger), fun (raspberry coconut frou frous) and most importantly, delicious. I also feel like I got to know Mr. Sobel through his 'food truck dispatches' and again through his recipes, so the book is more than a normal cook book, it's a fun read too. Onto the recipes: As with all cooking you have to layer flavors to achieve that certain thing called deliciousness and in vegan cooking I believe it's even more important; fortunately for us, Mr. Sobel knows what he's doing. To that end though you have to work a little more for this desired tastiness, so be prepared to spend a little time making these dishes. But the time spent is very much worth it. His flavor combinations give the recipes depth and complexity; he knows how to make food taste really, really good. The maple mustard seitan strips are just amazing, as is the cheesy broccoli beer soup with smoky sunflower chorizo and the brown sugar bourbon glazed seitan with ancho chili aioli is killer--in fact, got to go make some more of that tonight since I just made myself hungry thinking of it. Some reviews have mentioned the ingredients sometimes being hard to find, but hello? you're leaving a review on Amazon where you can buy chestnut flour with one click :) Mr. Sobel gives you a good baseline to start from with his vegan pantry chapter, so you know ahead of time what you should keep on hand. Only thing I don't have and probably won't buy is a dehydrator since there are some raw recipes as well. Bottom line, be prepared to amaze yourself in the kitchen.

I am a Cinnamon Snail food truck devotee. I live in New Jersey but when I can, I haul into NYC and hunt down my favorite food truck and spend an hour waiting on line for some of the most delicious and well-made food I've ever experienced. I love their donuts, their korean-spiced seitan, their coffees, pastries - shall I go on? Snaily is no longer brightening the streets of NYC with their glorious, healthy, vegan food - but I now have their cookbook. I love the stories behind the truck. The message of compassion that the book projects. And oh yeah, the recipes. YUM! My only criticism is that some of the recipes take time to prepare (which makes me appreciate the CS truck even more!) and there are a lot of nuts in the recipes. I love nuts and they are a big part of the vegan diet, however my youngest has a severe tree nut allergy and I do not keep nuts in the house. The ingredients used are somewhat difficult to find in a typical suburban setting but I purchased some on- line. I eagerly anticipated the release of this book and it did not disappoint. The pages are colorful and the recipes easy to follow. I learned some new techniques as well. It is not a simple cookbook, mind you. The flavors and the recipes are complex. But it brings vegan food to a new high - no meat lover would turn it down!

I've made 5 recipes (Kimchi, Korean Kimchi Soup, Miso Teriyaki Seiten Sandwiches, Gochuang Burgers Deluxe, and Raw Raspberry Chocolate Fudge Tart) and they were delicious. Lots of flavor!! Nothing mild or dull so far. The recipes were easy to follow but had a lot of steps and were time consuming. Some of the ingredients took some effort to find (Korean ground Chile, brown mustard seeds, glutinous rice flour, micro-greens), but the results were worth the effort. This is a cookbook for a vegan with an adventurous spirit! One recommendation I have is to definitely include any ingredient the author lists as "optional." I've found that the optional ingredients take the recipes from "really good" to "awesome."

This is an amazing book, the recipes are delicious food by any standard. Having said this, I’m not a vegan; I don’t live in NY and have never even heard of The Cinnamon Snail. I have no idea how Amazon came with this recommendation. But… I’m so glad I came across this book. The book is divided in 10 parts: Breakfast: here you will find the most yummy way to start your day, or finish it if you have any leftovers. Bourbon Hazelnut Pancakes with Cardamom Brown Butter? Fresh Fig Pancakes with Chamomile Blood Orange Syrup? Poached Pear-Stuffed French Toast with Spiced Pecans? Have made this 3 and they turned out great. Beverages: Ok, so my husband was more than ready to move from lemonade and hibiscus iced tea and I had no idea where to look at until I had this book. Made the Supreme Raw Fudge Brownie Milk Shake and he declared his love for ever (again). The Brazil Nut Milk is also very good. And the Icy Strawberry Thai Basil Lemonade is a whole new story on lemonade history. Appetizers: made the Flaky spinach pie (better than any other I’d made) and the Smoky Portobello and Potato Stuffed Poblanos. Really, really, really good both. Soup : Made just one and I don’t know if I’m ready to move away and try another: Jalapeño Corn Chowdah, ate the last drop and I’m ready to make it again and again. Sandwiches: Ok, here I wasn’t that honest to the book. I used Fish in the Miso Teriyaki Seitan with Grilled Onions and Five-Spice fried Sunflower Gomasio. I don’t eat gluten for fun so a vital gluten product like Seitan is out for me, leave me with the bread and I call that a good meal. The fish was heavenly in the sandwich and I think if Adam was into eating fish, that’s the protein he would’ve used here. Cinnamains: this is the high end, gourmet restaurant like food, very involved dishes but the results are more than worth it. Made the Galangal Pea Pancakes with Basil Seitan and fried Kaffir Lime Leaves. Again, no seitan for me but free range chicken. The tastiest chicken ever! Veggies and Sides: Haven’t made any here but the Lemon-Garlic Swiss Chard is in my to-do-list for this week. Desserts: Roasted Mandarin-Chocolate Twinkies where really good but the Gooey Salted-Caramel Pecan Turtle Bars where the star. All I can say is you better try them, they are that good. Donuts: Ok, I had to make the Cinnamon Snails, there was a reason the food truck was named after this yummy dessert. They were a hit at home and no leftovers where the proof. And the Mexican Hot Chocolate-Glazed Twist… OMG! The Saucy Stuff: haven’t touched this part of the book but I’m more than confident that it’s as equally good as the rest. With things like Red Wine Syrup, Pumpkin Brown Butter and Truffled Cashew Cheese, you can’t go wrong. So, truth to be told, I graduated from Culinary School and love to cook, this is not your weeknight cookbook that would take you from scratch to dinner in 30 minutes but the time spent cooking will be worth it. Received the book almost a week ago and have been cooking from here the entire week (I’m off work right now and spoiling my husband for the few days left). I did not receive this book for free for my honest review, I wish I had. BUT, I’m more than happy with the investment and would pay for it again!

A few things this book is not: beginner Recipes, "Healthy" recipes, quick recipes. A few things this book is: Imaginative, flavorful, new ideas on vegan cuisine. I've only made a few things so far. The food is full of hard to find ingredients, but they are used quite ingeniously and what comes out is very labor intensive but very flavorful food. As opposed to many other cookbooks, this is clearly written from the point of view of cooking in a restaurant. The food is broken down into recipes for components. One for the sauce, one for the toppings, one for the main ingredient. As if you were running a kitchen and were prepping the building blocks for your menu items. What is nice about this method is it is great for someone who might want to take these ideas and combine them in different ways (a few sections of the book even take a base recipe and then show you five to six different ways. The negative of this is the recipe's look like they have five times as many ingredients (it's fairly labor intensive (not a weeknight cookbook for sure) than they actual do, also the ratio of components is a bit off. I made the Thai BBQ Seitan Ribs Sandwich and have an entire extra jar full of sauce and pickled sweet onions and a whole tupperware full of spicy roasted peanuts,. They are delicious and I'm going to use them on veggie burgers next week, but if you can't find other uses for some of the things it's a lot of wasted food. Overall this book is worth it for the incredibly diverse recipes and flavors, I have about fifty pages bookmarked to try. Just be aware of what you are getting into.

If you've ever been to the Cinnamon snail, you know that their food is amazing. They ranked #1 place to eat in New York and #4 in the entire US on Yelp for 2014 and have a plethora of other awards. Adam Sobel is a culinary genius, and I do not say this lightly. This book has been the most highly anticipated cookbook on my list since 2011, because the snail has never produced anything that I didn't LOVE. I'm pleased to report that the book is no exception!! I was worried that the food wouldn't taste as delicious as the food truck. Like the seitan, which could fool many carnivores. And oh, did it go above and beyond my highest expectations! Never has homemade seitan been so delicious. As soon as the book was virtually delivered to my eagerly awaiting paws, I ran out to 24-hour Walmart to buy ingredients. The index, which you can view before buying the book, is positively delicious. I didn't see a single thing I didn't want to eat. Skimming through the index for the first time, I was extremely pleased to see the Vanilla Bourbon Creme Brulee donuts, which is one of their best sellers. That's where I started, because these donuts are from heaven. Crunchy, soft, sugary warm deliciousness... and my first try was just as good as from the truck. I will be making them at all of my future family holidays. I also made the Broccoli Beer Soup, Peking Seitan Bao Buns, Blueberry Lemon Cheesecake. I'll post pictures tonight. Everything was heavenly. I didn't even know I was capable of making food so delicious. This book is a total game changer for my home menu. I cannot wait to try all of the other recipes. As I was cooking, I read through the intro and got lots of warm fuzzies reading about how and why Adam learned to cook. So sweet. One thing that I was worried about was that it wouldn't include some of my (less popular?) seasonal favorites. And although the book doesn't have some specific seasonal recipes such my all time favorite Hickory BBQ Seitan Sub, it does have all the elements there to make it, albeit with a little searching. The original sandwich on the menu read as follows: Hickory BBQ Seitan with Bourbon Braised Garlic Marinated Kale, Caramelized Onions, Coconut Bacon, and Horseradish Cream. I used the following recipes to duplicate the sub of my dreams: Brown Sugar Bourbon Glazed Seitan (132) with a few tablespoons of added BBQ sauce Bourbon Blanched Mustard Greens (187) sub baby kale, added garlic and caramelized onions I adapted the horseradish cream from the horseradish mustard cream in the perogie recipe and the aioli listed for the recipe. And I used this ( Coconut Bacon (2 Pack/Bags) - Enjoy Crunchy Coconut Chips With A Bacon Flavor - Gluten Free and Vegan Friendly Snack Food! ) for bacon. It was just divine. Buy this book. Never eat another animal product again. I'll continue to update as I try each recipe.

The recipes are truly unique, but incredibly difficult for an amateur cook. The only dish that is not too complicated is a soup, but I struggled to find anything within my skill level (which is average). My wife wouldn't eat the soup because it was pink and suffered from too much wine from 2 cups of wine during cooking. I have been cooking from 7 different vegan books (Isa Does It, Robinson, Thug Kitchen) for years now. Every dish in this book has like 8 steps, e.g. use food processor, saute something, then saute something else, then use blender for something else. I just became frustrated and exhausted and couldn't look at the book anymore. I'm trying to cook this while giving breakfast to the kids. Next time I'm in New York I'll try to find the Cinnamon Snail and enjoy the food. Everything looks delicious and amazing. It's just too complicated for home cooking. Adam Sobel is a genius, but I can't keep up.

This is a beautiful cookbook with some amazing recipes. I've already made the Broccoli Cheese Beer Soup with Sunflower Chorizo (twice) and the Jalapeno Corn Chowdah. There are many other recipes that are marked for the near future. I will say that this cookbook calls for some ingredients that may be hard to find depending on where you live or ones you may not have even heard of. I'm pretty "with it" food wise, but I'm wondering who else has heard of asafetida? This is NOT for a novice cook, as there are multiple steps in some of these recipes, however, a decent cook or a veteran chef would have no problem with these recipes. It's definitely forced me to step up my cooking game and these recipes are incredibly well put together. This would probably not be an everyday cookbook for your average person, but rather something to pull out when you want to make a nice production out of one meal, particularly on a day off.