Book Review

The Candle Café Cookbook
by Joy Pierson and Bart Potenza with Barbara Scott-Goodman
Review by Cathe Olson

The Candle Café, created by Joy Pierson and Bart Potenza, has been acknowledged as New York’s best vegetarian restaurant by both holistic and traditional communities. Now you don’t have to travel to New York to try their dishes. You can make them yourself with “The Candle Café Cookbook.”

The book contains over 150 recipes. There are appetizers, soups, salads, sandwiches, main courses, vegetables, sauces, desserts, breads, and breakfasts. As I paged through the book, my mouth began to water. Every dish sounds delicious. There are entrees like Pecan-Crusted Seitan and Tempeh Scalopini. Desserts include Lemon-Tofu Cheesecake with Blood Orange Glaze and Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Ganache Frosting. The color pictures inserted in the center of the book look absolutely amazing. Gourmet cooking – and all vegan!

Unfortunately, when I began to try the recipes, my enthusiasm waned. First of all, most of the recipes are complicated. They require a lot of steps and a lot of pans. This is fine if you are working in a restaurant, but for a busy mom the recipes are not practical.

Okay, I figured – it’s nice to have a special occasion, go-all-out cookbook. But when I did go through the trouble to make the recipes, many of the dishes came out just so-so. Almost every recipe I tried needed to be adjusted to make it taste good.

For example, I made the Potato-Leek Soup. It had no flavor at all but when I added some dill and miso, it was very tasty. I also tried the Cornmeal-Crusted Tempeh and while the texture was nice and crisp, it was way too salty and I had trouble getting the cornmeal coating to stick to the tempeh. For the Savory Vegetable Potpie, the filling was delicious (the sweet potatoes are a nice touch). The crust was pretty good but I needed much less water than the recipe specifies. The Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies were okay, however the batter was soupy so I had to add a lot of extra flour.

The one recipe I tried that came out perfect just the way it was written was the Candle Café Granola. It was just sweet enough and the addition of steel-cut oats made it different from most granolas. There are several more recipes I had marked to try (like Tofu Satay with Coconut-Peanut Sauce and Seitan Piccata) but I am hesitant to make them because I don’t know if they’ll turn out or not.

For me this cookbook is probably not one I will use to cook from, however it is fun to page through while I dream about visiting The Candle Café someday and eating gourmet vegan food – something I can’t get where I live.

Order The Candle Café CookbookNow!

Cathe is a freelance writer and the author of Simply Natural Baby Food: Easy Recipes for Delicious Meals Your Infant and Toddler Will LoveSimply Natural Baby Food and The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook: Whole Foods To Nourish Pregnant And Breastfeeding Women - And Their Families. She has studied vegetarian, macrobiotic, and whole foods nutrition and cookery. Cathe cooked at natural foods restaurants and delis in the San Francisco Bay and Central Coast areas of California before settling down with her husband Gary to raise a family. She works at home while caring for her daughters Aimie and Emily. Read Cathe's blog

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