Healthy Vegan Air Fryer Cookbook (2020), by Dana Angelo White

No, I’m not going Vegan…

Truth be told, most of the recipe books that make their way into our household are to satisfy the quest for some new inspo in the kitchen.  Rarely are they because we actually need to learn some new technique because we are experienced cooks and it’s new and different ways of combining ingredients that captures our interest.

However, our household is also on a quest to reduce carbon emissions (and the electricity bill), and though we have heard the evangelical enthusiasm for air fryers for a while now, we only  purchased one late last year and are still learning how to use it. (FWIW ours is a Phillips.)

I bought the Women’s Weekly Super Easy Air Fryer Cookbook, and was disappointed.  It is full of unappealing so-called family recipes, many of them high fat even if they are less fatty than deep fried.  I should have known from page 9 where it lists the five best foods to cook in an air fryer: roast vegies, crisp chickpeas, crumbed foods, pizza and calzone, and meatballs and sausages. I should have known from the fact that ‘family friendly’ fish means Fish Tacos and Fish Cakes. I should have known from the inclusion of just one vegetarian ‘weeknight’ recipe: Mozzarella Mushroom Burgers.  We haven’t cooked a single recipe from it.

But without any help from that cookbook, The Spouse has mastered the art of cooking perfect recognisable fish, such as the Blue Eye that we had with (my) ratatouille this week. Very good, nutritious, genuinely low-fat food can be cooked in an air fryer, and because it heats up so quickly it’s faster (and much cheaper) than an oven.

We eat vegetarian at least twice a week, so the Healthy Vegan Air Fryer Cookbook piqued my interest. The author’s PoV is that eating a plant-based diet can mean eating more plants, not eating only plants. 

This collection of vegan recipes sets out to reinvent classic recipes, create innovate new flavours and highlight the beauty of plant-based foods. (p.7)

The Contents list comprises:

• Air fryer basics
• Breakfasts
• Mains
• Sides
• Snacks and Salads
• Desserts
• Index

The Air Fryer Basics section is brief.  Two pages which is not adequate IMO because clearly some recipes call for accessories which we don’t have and it doesn’t explain why they’re necessary. Then there are two pages *yawn* about the benefits of plant-based foods.

The cookbook’s design, however, is well done;  The layout is clear, and the font is big enough for easy reading.  The ingredients list is well set out into the different parts of more complex recipes, and there’s a nutrition panel, a calorie count, plus prep and cook times.  Air fryer temperature, alas, is in Fahrenheit necessitating conversions for 380°F and 390°F and 400°F etc.  (They could very easily have included Celsius, but American book designers don’t think that way, I guess.) Nearly all the recipes have an accompanying photo.  Sometimes there are ‘tips’ for do-ahead strategies or a ‘different spin’.

So, to the recipes…

Breakfasts.  Hmm.  Lots of sweet things though the Chocolate and Zucchini Muffins look okay, but #Shudder my antennae went on high alert when I see the use of fake meats such as something called a vegan sausage pattie with a recommended brand to buy.  These turn up in Breakfast Sandwiches too. I do not eat ultra processed foods and plant-based meat substitutes are (mostly? always?) ultra processed. And then there’s 3-Ingredient Everything Bagels, made with ‘everything bagel seasoning’.  What is that? Oh. This. As far as I can see, it’s just seeds, garlic, salt and onion, with or without chilli. What kind of recipe book doesn’t give the proportions so that you have to buy a $20 jar of readily available seeds?

Let’s move onto Mains. There are some interesting ideas here. I am doubtful about the entire concept of a Po’Boy but our surfeit of tomatoes refusing to ripen might respond well to being cooked as fried green tomatoes in panko breadcrumbs. I’m always on the lookout for BBQ-friendly ideas for vegetarian friends and Balsamic Mushroom Burgers served with avocado and hummus looks like a winner. (There’s no recipe for hummus, I guess because you make it in a food processor not an air fryer. But still.) I like the look of Chickpea Burgers too. There’s an enticing Cauliflower Casserole with Cashew Cream Sauce, and who knew that you could make a Cashew Stir Fry in an air fryer? And if you like Mexican: empanadas, enchiladas, taquitos, quesadillas and tacos, there are good recipes for those too.

Jackfruit as a substitute for the crab in crabcakes sounds intriguing.  Google tells me it has a stringy texture not unlike meat and a bland taste so I guess that the addition of Old Bay Seasoning is to jazz it up.  But what is Old Bay Seasoning? It turns out you can buy it at Woolworths where you can see the list of ingredients in it, so I suppose you could experiment with making your own if you’d rather not eat the ‘anti-caking’ agent.

Oh dear, this use of processed foods get worse.  There is a Tater Tot Casserole, touted as a brilliant hack for topping a casserole.  From what I can see online, frozen Tater Tots are what is sold here as Potato Gems which are the most repellent way of cooking a potato that I know.

The section on Sides is more to my taste. I’d never thought of making Falafel in the air fryer, and you can use it to make Rosemary Flatbread too.  Carrot Fries with Lemon and Garlic Aioli look like a useful addition to the ‘nibbles’ repertoire, and I could use up the thick liquid from a tin of chickpeas (aquafaba) to make crispy Onion Rings.  With eggplants growing in the garden it’s possible we could tire of Ratatouille made to the recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking so I might well try Mini Eggplants with Tahini Sauce (and prettied up with pomegranate seeds!) Hasselback Sweet Potatoes, oh yes please!

Snacks and Salads mostly look good too. There’s Avocado Egg Rolls with black beans and salsa or Panko-Crusted Avocado Wedges; Beet chips with Creamy Dill Sauce (made with cashew nuts) look especially enticing if made with golden beets as well as red ones. Kale chips, I’m not so sure. You can make bruschetta in the air fryer too, not just the Tomato and Garlic one in this cookbook but also the Tomato and Sardine version from the River Cottage Good Comfort cookbook. But there are some things I would never bother with, such as the cauliflower florets in panko breadcrumbs.  Life, as they say, is too short to stuff a mushroom and likewise to crumb a floret. There is a dependence on crispy ‘fried’ ideas, but I suppose that is why many people buy an air fryer.

It’s certainly brilliant for quickly roasting up the vegetables for a Roasted Veggie Soup.

Desserts: Lots of ideas.  I’m tempted to try the Pear Clafoutis, and it seems you can make shortbread in the air fryer. (I have a new recipe for Macadamia Nut Shortbread thanks to Ben Ungermann at Masterchef and it goes really well with cucumber sorbet — courtesy of the surfeit in the vegetable patch.)  You can also use the air fryer to make Peach Parfaits or a Blueberry Crisp (which my Encyclopedia of American Cooking calls a ‘crumble’).  The method for Cinnamon Twists to use up leftover pie dough also suggests that I could use it to make one of my go-to recipes for nibbles: Herby Cheese Twists.

The prime disadvantage of this cookbook is that it’s American and though the ingredients are listed in both imperial and metric, Australian cooks will need to remember that imperial cup and spoon measurements are not the same as metric. As long as you use the same cup for measuring out each ingredient, the proportions should work out the same. (But did you know that there are two US cup measurements?  Yes, there is a US ‘legal cup’ and a US ‘customary cup’. Read this summary of Measuring Cups and Spoons Worldwide, and you’ll either laugh or cry.)

However, spoon measurements are trickier.  A Google search tells me that in Australia — the only country in the world to set this standard — a tablespoon measure holds 20ml or 4 teaspoons. In the US, UK and New Zealand a tablespoon holds 15mls or 3 teaspoons. (Is this crazy, or what? ) Sometimes this may not matter much: Two US tablespoons of seeds (30ml) on some Poppy Seed Scones is not that different to two Australian tablespoons (40ml) and if it ‘looks wrong’ you simply don’t sprinkle all of them on the scones. But a 10ml difference in the amount of water added to some Peanut Butter and Chia Breakfast Squares is going to affect the dough.  Fortunately our teaspoons are the same (5ml, 2.5 grams)…

Normally, this kind of messing about with measurements would make me hesitate to recommend a cookbook, but the thing is that there’s not much else available in this niche space.  There’s a gap in the market for an Australian Vegan/Vegetarian air fryer cookbook!

Author: Dana Angelo White
Title: Healthy Vegan Air Fryer Cookbook
Publisher: Alpha (DK), 2020
ISBN: 9781465493316, pbk., 160 pages
Review copy courtesy of Bloombury via Penguin Random House.