Who wouldn’t want to eat Sadness-Smashing Potatoes?
OK, so the full name is Sadness-Smashing Potatoes and Brussels Sprouts, but these are no ordinary Brussels sprouts. Nor are any other foods in Lisanna Wallance’s new vegan cookbook, with recipes developed entirely on the Vineyard during the lockdown of COVID-19.
Each of the 120 recipes comes with a purpose — for example, inflammation relief (cucumber and asparagus salad), oxygenation (seaweed and beet salad), or passion (mushroom pizza).
The format for each recipe is consistent: first the name, purpose, and allergen status (gluten-free, nut-free, no sugar). An enticing paragraph follows, describing what’s in the dish — and what’s in it for you (“rich in healthy plant fats … bursting with protective antioxidants … natural antihistamine properties”). Then comes standard cookbook material: ingredients, directions, serving size, tips.
The final written element of each entry is a little sidebar titled “Magic Benefits.” For instance, Chocolate Cake (“for lucid dreams”) offers adaptogens, magnesium, and acetylcholine. If you want to learn why chocolate cake is good for you, go to page 67 for a scientific explanation.
But these recipes are not just words. The photos of each finished dish are to die for — or given the message of the book, to live for. If you think mushrooms are not for you, look at the image that goes with Creamy Baked Portobellos, and tell me you wouldn’t reconsider. Not a fan of roasted vegetables? Your mouth will still water looking at the final glory of the Rainbow Antioxidants (for immunity, with the magical benefits of glucosinolates, natural nitrates, and betanin). And your eyes might roll at the concept of Spiced Sweet Potato–Hibiscus Pie — but those same eyes will pop when they see that translucent ruby slice of magical benefits like manganese.
I am an aspirational cookbook user. I’ve bought scores of cookbooks in my time, and use precisely three of them with any regularity. But the premise — and the photos — of this book convinced me to try anew.
Wallance made a point to focus on fresh ingredients that could be sourced on the Island. All the same, certain items can be hard to find (culinary-grade flower petals), or expensive (lion’s mane mushrooms), or just not something I find appetizing (yellow squash).
That is not a problem. You can freely substitute nearly anything. “I originally proposed this as a flexitarian book,” says Wallance in an interview. “I want to teach people a technique system that they can then take and make their own. That’s very important to me. What matters is understanding a technique, like the science of searing versus steaming.”
Martha’s Vineyard was central to the writing of this book. Wallance is a third-generation summer visitor, and cook-tested each recipe in its appropriate season here, during the pandemic. She finds it meaningful that Island readers recognize that the ingredients in the recipes — and in those luscious photos — are available from local farms: “My gravity is centered around this place; it’s what formed my relationship to nature and the energy of the forest.”
Wallance emphasizes the importance of eating seasonally. “When I cooked these recipes over the pandemic, it was every other day going to Island farmstands,” she recalls. “I would pick out all the ingredients that looked delicious, and try to figure out how to pair them together and optimize what was available. So in the book, I really emphasize how seasonality gives us what our body needs to help get us through that season.”
But even more than this, she emphasizes, “I’m using each recipe to teach about how adaptogens can help.” Adaptogens are plants — chiefly herbs and mushrooms — that have positive impacts on our nervous system, helping to alleviate stress, fatigue, and other imbalances. Adaptogens are becoming more popular and therefore easier to find online, at health food stores, and even some pharmacies. For households with limited budgets, Wallance points out an advantage of our local ecosystem: “Foraging is an option on the Island. There are so many native and invasive plants — goldenrod for instance, or dandelion, but specifically goldenrod, because it’s everywhere; it’s invasive.”
The point, she emphasizes, is to seek opportunities to add adaptogens to one’s diet in general, rather than making sure you’re using a specific ingredient in a recipe. “Even if I’m not going to go buy reishi mushroom powder, I know that I can forage or source this other plant,” she says as an example. “If you don’t want to include ashwagandha root in the chocolate mousse, that’s OK. If you want to add cream, add cream. If you don’t have gluten-free flour, use wheat flour — simple. The important point is that if we want to be healthier, we encourage people to eat more plants, so the real core of this book is to take this fact and adapt it to your needs.”
“Plant-Based Magic” is available widely online, and at Edgartown Books and Bunch of Grapes, which will host an author event with Wallance on August 22.
