10.01.08
Good Idea, Crap Execution: Jeff Rogers’ Vice Cream
I’ve got nothing against Jeff Rogers, author of Vice Cream: Over 70 Sinfully Delicious Dairy-Free Delights, although it does bear saying that his self-chosen sobriquet, “The Naughty Vegan!” is, in a word, twee.
Nor do I have anything against the idea behind his book, namely, that people who do not wish to consume animal dairy products, for whatever reason, might nevertheless enjoy a frozen dessert that wasn’t an ice or a sorbet. In fact, I heartily agree.
But I do have a number of problems with this recipe book.
First off, there’s the title. I will skip, for the moment, a discussion of why I find the invoking of terms like “vice” and “sin” in relation to food to be problematic and merely point out that if one is so devoted to clean living that one is capable of considering vegan desserts made (as instructed!) with all-organic ingredients and nary a speck of refined sugars to be “sinful,” one is perhaps living an overly-virtuous life.
Second is the fact that there are, in essence, only two recipes. All the “over 70″ variations are nothing more than ringing the changes on the two methods. Further, the two methods themselves differ only the slightest bit, in that the “raw” recipes use dates as sweetener instead of the “cooked” maple syrup called for in all the others. It is only out of courtesy that I can bring myself to say they are even two methods, rather than a more accurate one-and-a-half. Whether you find it admirable or infuriating that someone managed to parlay a recipe and a half — and not even a particularly challenging or difficult-to-derive recipe-and-a-half at that — into a book deal is entirely a matter of perspective, and heaven knows mine has oscillated to and fro all evening.
Nevertheless, the recipes are there, and therein lies the third problem: whoever edited this book should be keelhauled. I got the strong impression, reading it, that whoever was assigned to edit the book over at Celestial Arts (an imprint of Ten Speed Press) back in 2003 or so had never been inside a kitchen in his or her life, and had certainly not bothered to test any of the recipes.
Interestingly, the poor editing doesn’t show much on first browse. The copy is clean and the recipes are presented clearly. But when you begin to read with the intent of actually preparing (I’d say “cooking,” but for the fact that none of these desserts is cooked, meaning that the author has completely ignored the family of frozen desserts that use a custard base) one or two, the problems bob to the surface like clots of wheatgrass scum in an inadequately-mixed smoothie.
On the surface, the recipes seem very simple. The recipes consist of nut milks, prepared with either juice or water, some sweetener, and either fruit or flavorings in the form of extracts or spices. They rely heavily on the use of a blender and/or a juicer, not only to puree fruits and other flavorings, but also to generate the nut milk to be used as the base.
Let me say that again: to generate the nut milk to be used as a base. This book was published in 2004. Does anyone else see the problem here? Nowhere does Rogers discuss the use of prepared nut milks–which have been readily available since well before he wrote the book–in making vegan frozen desserts, nor does he even acknowledge their existence except for canned coconut milk, which he grudgingly acknowledges will do in a pinch. Also, while I appreciate the fact that Vice Cream does not rely entirely upon soy milk, the fact that it is mentioned nowhere in the book is an issue that, like a number of others, makes me think that Rogers did not approach his task as a cookbook writer — which is to say as someone aware of and capable of explaining the technical and material scope of his project and where it fits in to the larger culinary picture — but primarily as a chronicler of things he had done in his own kitchen that happened to work out well. Sadly, he did not have an editor perspicacious enough to query him on these issues, or to just encourage him to get a blog instead of attempting an actual book, which frankly would’ve been a lot more appropriate to the material.
While we’re on the subject of Things A Halfway Competent Cookbook Editor Should Have Caught, beware the paragraph Rogers includes on non-nutritive sweeteners for these desserts. Rogers recommends the use of stevia for sweetening without adding sugars in order to make diabetic-friendly and low-GI-friendly desserts. Fine as far as it goes; as it happens I am a big fan of stevia so was glad to see it featured. Rogers then fails to address the fact that stevia is produced in both liquid and powder forms, and in the liquid form, that both glycerin- and alcohol-based solutions are available, and that these variations are going to pose different challenges to creating a final product that performs well in terms of taste and texture. Most bizarrely of all, Rogers does not even hint that there could be a major texture problem with stevia-sweetened creams, which rather boggles the mind given that he is calling for recipes that ordinarily include a cup of maple syrup to be sweetened, instead, with one and a half teaspoons of a dry powder. That’s rather a lot of liquid to have just vanish from a frozen dessert and expect to have it turn out in anything like the same texture as the original recipe.
Similar lack of testing shows, and even more blatantly, in Rogers’ suggestion that brown rice syrup “may work well” when mixed with other sweeteners. Yes, it may. So might agave nectar, or malt syrup, or crystalline fructose, or for that matter the sweet sweet nectar of generosity and kindness that courses through my veins and that has so far kept me from using obscenities in writing this review. But again, I expect more from a cookbook than a hand-wave and a “well, hey, this might work.” Mr. Rogers, if you’re reading this, you may be a stalwart person, a charming conversationalist, and a dab hand with a Champion juicer, but you’re a crap cookbook writer, and you can tell your editor I said so.
While we’re on the sweetener subject, let’s talk about maple syrup. I like maple syrup. I like it a lot. I cook with it frequently. But it has a rather particular and specific flavor of its own, even when very cold. To have it feature in every single one of the non-raw recipes seems like… oh, I don’t know… no, wait, I do: culinary laziness. In some of the recipes, like the chai, or (of course!) the maple walnut, it seems like just the thing. But I can’t be the only person who saw it in a recipe for peppermint ice cream and involuntarily made a face. Maple syrup simply isn’t the best sweetener in every conceivable case. Even if one doesn’t want to attempt honey (not vegan to some) or refined cane sugar, there are numerous other sweetening options, some of which I mentioned in the previous paragraph. For that matter, why not explore other maple syrup options? For instance, how about using the more strongly-flavored Grade B syrup in places where a stronger maple flavor would be desirable? What about crystallized maple sugar, which has a very alluring texture? The All Maple Syrup All The Time regime is lazy and dull, and the All Honey Date All The Time regime in the “raw” portion of the book isn’t any better.
While I’m here, I just have to say a word or two about one particular paragraph in the front matter. On page 12 of the edition I am looking at, there’s a short paragraph about durian. Just as durian itself is a humdinger of a fruit, this is a humdinger of a paragraph:
“…[durian is] shipped to the United States frozen, so you may find it in the freezer section. Durian is a large, thorny, hard-skinned fruit containing four to five sections of fleshy fruit, each enclosing several large seeds. A seven-pound durian will yield about two and a half pounds of edible fruit. When the fruit is ripe and at room temperature, you can pull apart some of the thorns to create a tear in the skin, exposing the fruit within. Be careful as the thorns are sharp and can cut skin. You can also cut the durian open with a knife, which is a little safer. Be warned that durian is also called “stinky fruit.” It has a very distinctive odor, sometimes mistaken for natural gas.”
Where to begin? First of all, in many major cities (very much including Seattle, where Rogers lives), durian is in fact available fresh. But let us suppose that frozen durian is the only thing available. How long does it take to thaw one out? Should it be thawed at room temperature or in the refrigerator? Does the texture change markedly if it has been frozen, and if so, does this affect how one might handle it for a recipe? You certainly won’t find out from Rogers, who leapfrogs straight from dragging this deep-frozen sea mine of a tropical fruit home from the nearest freezer section to having a ripe durian at room temperature. Which he then proceeds to indicate can be pulled apart, at some risk to life and limb, before making the concession that one could conceivably use a knife.
What is that about? I mean, aside from patent idiocy? You can render a watermelon into pieces by dropping it from a height, too, and portion out servings of tuna noodle casserole by sticking your bare hand right into the bubbling hotdish, but most folks prefer to avoid unnecessary injury and mess and use the utensils that were developed specifically for the purpose of performing such tasks. You know, like knives. Which would certainly be the first thing I reached for if I had occasion to try to dismember something that weighed as much as a sack of potatoes and was sufficiently spiky that it would do nicely as a projectile weapon.
Those of you who have encountered the durian in the flesh may also concur with me that the warning about the smell comes a bit late in the game and is, in fact, almost criminally understated. This is a fruit, after all, that has been banned from public transit, airplanes and airports, and some hotels in the countries (like Malaysia) where it is grown, and these are countries where large numbers of people actively enjoy eating it. I have eaten durian, both fresh and frozen, and in various preparations, and I quite like the flavor. But even I cannot help but concur with Richard Sterling, who writes “…… its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock.” There is a Malay saying that durian “smells like him, but tastes like her.” This is, you begin to comprehend, not a fruit to be approached in a casual sort of way, unless one lives not only alone, but without any neighbors within, say, a half a mile.
And after all this, how much durian pulp is actually required to make the Coconut Durian flavour of raw “vice cream”? A whopping one and a quarter cups. God alone knows what Rogers assumes the hapless vegan is going to do with the remainder of an extremely large and, at best, rather difficult fruit. For this, and his many other sins, including neglecting to mention that the same markets that sell whole durian fresh or frozen also often have the frozen pulp available in smaller quantities much more amenable to experimentation, I have but one recommendation:
Divide surplus durian pulp into two cardboard takeaway food containers. Seal them up, but not too thoroughly.
Send one to Jeff Rogers.
And send the other to his editor.
Malcolm said,
October 1, 2008 at 9:08 am
Heh. I did a much nicer writeup (of the same sort of opinion) over at my blog, hidden within discussions of health and politics.