Vegetarian Star

When Amanda Cohen first opened her vegetable restaurant in NYC, Dirt Candy, she took some criticism from a few vegans for her comments about the purpose of vegetarian food and the people who consume it.

A few years later, the restaurant is a hit and Cohen has proved she can whip up a vegan dish that silences the critics — mainly because they’re too busy eating.

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“I wanted people to think of vegetables as a treat, as something fun. Like candy from the dirt.”

—Amanda Cohen, owner of NYC’s Dirt Candy and author of her first cookbook, Dirt Candy.

Some of the candy you’ll find in Cohen’s cookbook includes Fennel Salad with Candied Grapefruit Pops and Grilled Cheese Croutons; Smoked Cauliflower and Waffles with Horseradish Cream Sauce; Stone-Ground Grits with Pickled Shiitakes and Tempura Poached Eggs; Popcorn Pudding with Butterscotch Cream; Red Pepper Velvet Cake with Peanut Brittle and Peanut Ice Cream.

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“That they’re boring and only really meant to be an accompaniment to the protein on the plate. And it has to be healthy – which isn’t a bad thing, but healthy usually connotes bland, and that’s certainly not how we think of vegetables or vegetarian food.”

—Amanda Cohen, owner and chef of NYC’s all-vegetable restaurant Dirt Candy.

The latest adventure in Cohen’s anything but boring culinary feats include making making pastrami from parsnip.

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Amanda Cohen has a brand new cookbook out with more than just recipes. There are also illustrations, comics and musings about the restaurant industry.

According to the owner and chef at NYC’s vegetable restaurant Dirt Candy, such a diverse selection of material is needed to make a cookbook more valuable these days as the Internet has given them some competition.

“For me, the internet has changed the whole recipe delivery system,” Cohen told Blisstree. “When I’m looking for versions of a recipe I go online first, not to my bookshelf. A cookbook can’t just list a bunch of recipes and have that be enough anymore. Maybe as an artifact, but it’s not a useful book.”

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USA Today’s Whitney Mattheson was surprised at the content of Amanda Cohen‘s Dirt Candy. She expected a traditional book filled with recipes and a few cute cartoons. She was pleasantly surprised to learn the book is a mix of both, including some facts and history more exciting than licking a spoon covered with wasabi like the “scandalous history of the graham cracker.”

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Amanda Cohen‘s interview with the New York Daily News times perfectly with the release of her cookbook, Dirt Candy: A Cookbook: Flavor-Forward Food from the Upstart New York City Vegetarian Restaurant.

Cohen gave readers a preview of some of the recipes they’ll find in the cookbook bearing the same name as her New York vegetable restaurant like hush puppies with maple butter and kimchi doughnuts.

“I love cookbooks and have hundreds at home, but I wanted to make one that I would be so excited to buy, take home and read, and not just because it was from a certain restaurant,” Cohen said.

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Amanda Cohen of NYC’s popular vegetable restaurant Dirt Candy sat down with the New York Times to discuss her upcoming cookbook with the same title as the restaurant.

Dirt Candy: A Cookbook: Flavor-Forward Food from the Upstart New York City Vegetarian Restaurant, due for release next week, is a combination of recipes, cool comics and the answers to some of your most burning restaurant questions like, “why a salad cost $14?”

The following are a few excerpts from her telephone interview.

Q: How did you arrive at the decision to do a cookbook this way, as a graphic novel?

A: I never really wanted to write a cookbook. I just felt like there are so many cookbooks out there and so many are done well. I wasn’t sure if I had something to add, and I didn’t want to do Vegetarian Cooking 101; that book was already out there. About a year into the restaurant, people started coming in and saying, “You should write a cookbook.” And I kept saying, “No, what we’re not ready.” And then finally, my husband and I were talking about ways to do it, because it was getting embarrassing, and he suggested we do it as a graphic novel. It was just this moment where I actually saw the cookbook, for the first time.

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Amanda Cohen, owner of New York-based vegetable restaurant Dirt Candy, is one of the star chefs on the 2012 Celebrity Chef Tour, where connoisseurs can experience both food and wine prepared by some of the nation’s most talented cuisine specialists.

“It’s kind of like a buffet that comes to you, you get a little bit of everything from different restaurants,” Cohen said of the event. “Instead of having to go to five different restaurants, you get to go to one.”

Cohen was the guest chef at Denver’s Linger restaurant where she shared her expertise on veggies.

For a complete list of stops on tour, visit Celebrity Chef Tour.

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