The 30-Minute Vegan's Taste of the East: 150 Asian-Inspired Recipes--from Soba Noodles to Summer Rolls (32 page)

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Authors: Mark Reinfeld,Jennifer Murray

Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Reference

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Before you cook legumes, it is recommended to clean them thoroughly, rinse well, and soak overnight. This improves their digestibility and reduces gas. Digestibility can also be improved by adding some fennel seeds, a handful of brown rice, or a few strips of the sea vegetable kombu to the legumes while cooking. If you do not have time to soak the beans overnight, a quick method is to bring beans and four times the amount of water to a boil, remove from the heat, cover, and allow them to sit for a few hours.
After soaking the legumes or boiling them in this way, discard the soaking water, add the measured amount of vegetable stock or water to a thick-bottomed pot, bring to a boil, cover, lower the heat to simmer, and cook until tender. The times in the following chart are for cooking dry legumes.
Do not add salt to the cooking liquid—it can make the legumes tough. Legumes are done cooking when they are tender but not mushy. They should retain their original shape.
Note: These times are for cooking dry beans. Please reduce cooking time by 25 percent when beans are soaked.
Dried Bean Cooking Chart
Homemade Coconut Milk
Want to avoid using can upon can of coconut milk? Here is a quick recipe for homemade coconut milk or cream. Open a young coconut by puncturing the coconut with a machete, large knife, or coconut opener. Pour the water through a strainer into a blender. Crack the coconut open using a large heavy knife, scoop out the meat, and put into the blender. Blend until creamy. You can use this liquid to replace the coconut milk in any given recipe.
Appendix B:
Supplemental Information
Why Vegan?
“In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about [greenhouse gas] reductions in a short period of time, [eating vegetarian meals] clearly is the most attractive opportunity. Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there.”
—DR. RAJENDRA PACHAURI, CHAIR OF THE
NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING UNITED NATIONS
INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
 
 
“Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
 
 
A vegetarian diet is one that does not include meat, fish, or poultry. There are three types of vegetarian diets. A
lacto-ovo vegetarian
diet includes eggs and dairy products. A
lacto-vegetarian
diet includes dairy products, but not eggs.
Vegan
is used to describe a diet and lifestyle that does not include the use or consumption of any animal-based products, including dairy or eggs. This means vegans also avoid wearing leather and silk, and products tested on animals. The phrase
plant-based
is often used instead of the word
vegan.
The reasons people choose to enjoy vegan foods are many. First and foremost, they taste incredible! People also turn to vegan foods for weight-loss and disease prevention. Numerous studies show that many serious illnesses—such as heart disease, obesity, and diabetes—can be prevented and reversed by enjoying more vegan foods.
Want to be Earth-friendly? In addition to providing an out-of-this-world culinary experience, eating vegan foods also happens to be one of the most effective steps we can take to protect the environment. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that meat production accounts for nearly one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions—more than the entire world’s transportation industry combined. We do more for the environment by switching meals to vegan than by trading in our gas guzzlers for an electric car or jogging to work.
Optimal Health
There is a true revolution occurring in the medical world regarding the benefits of vegan foods. Renowned doctors such as Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. and Dr. Dean Ornish have successfully reversed instances of heart disease with programs that incorporate vegan foods. Dr. John McDougall, Dr. Neal Barnard, and Dr. Gabriel Cousens have likewise had success reversing certain forms of diabetes.
The evidence continues to mount that overconsumption of the saturated fat and cholesterol in animal products leads to serious health problems, including obesity, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, gout, kidney stones, and certain forms of cancer.
In addition, animals raised on factory farms are routinely given hormones to accelerate their rate of growth for maximum profit. Antibiotics are used to protect their health as they are housed and transported in less-than-sanitary conditions. These drugs inevitably make their way into the bodies of the humans that consume them.
In a 1995 report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services affirmed that all of the body’s nutritional needs can be met through a well-planned plant-based diet.
In 2009 the American Dietetic Association restated its position that “well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence.” (ADA vol. 109, no. 7, July 2009) It is the association’s official opinion (as well as that of the Dietitians of Canada) that “appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.”
The ADA goes on to say that
the results of an evidence-based review showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease. Vegetarians also appear to have lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension and type 2 diabetes than non-vegetarians. Furthermore, vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index and lower overall cancer rates. Features of a vegetarian diet that may reduce risk of chronic disease include lower intakes of saturated fat and cholesterol and higher intakes of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, soy products, fiber, and phytochemicals. (ADA vol. 109, no. 7, July 2009)
May this forever dispel the myth that a vegan diet is nutritionally lacking in any way. For anyone concerned about this, please rest assured that vegan foods provide all of the protein, calcium, iron, and all other vital nutrients needed for us to thrive.
Preserving the Environment
Why does Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, go so far as to recommend that we go meatless one day a week as “the most attractive opportunity” to conserve greenhouse gases?
It’s because the environmental footprint of a vegan diet is a fraction of that of a meat-based diet. Vegan foods represent the best utilization of the Earth’s limited resources. It takes 16 pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. It’s astonishing to realize this when we see so much in the news about food and water shortages and people going to bed hungry.
We must use the resources of our planet wisely if we are to survive. World scientists agree that global warming poses a serious risk to humanity and life as we know it. The key to reducing global warming is to reduce activities that produce the greenhouse gases that cause the Earth’s temperature to rise. According to a 2006 UN report titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” raising livestock for food consumption is responsible for 18 percent of all greenhouse gases emitted. That’s a lot of gas! (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,
Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options,
2006.)
Here are some additional topics to consider for those wishing to “go green”:
The U.S. livestock population alone consumes enough grain and soybeans each year to feed over 5 times the U.S. human population. Animals are fed more than 80 percent of the corn and 95 percent of the oats that are grown on our soil.
Less than half of the harvested agricultural acreage in the United States goes to feed people.
According to the USDA, 1 acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of vegetables. This same amount of land can only produce 165 pounds of meat.
It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of meat.
It requires 3½ acres of land per person to support a meat-centered diet, 1½ acres of land to support a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet, and ⅙ of an acre of land to support a plant-based diet.
If Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 10 percent, it would free up 12 million tons of grain annually.
Half of the water used in the United States goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock. It takes approximately 2,500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of meat. Similarly, it takes approximately 4,000 gallons of water to provide a day’s worth of food per person for a meat-centered diet, 1,200 gallons for a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet, and 300 gallons for a plant-based diet.
Developing nations use land to raise beef for wealthier nations instead of utilizing that land for sustainable agriculture practices.
Topsoil is the dark, rich soil that supplies the nutrients to the food we grow. It takes 500 years to produce an inch of topsoil. This topsoil is rapidly vanishing due to clear-cutting of forests and cattle-grazing practices.
For each acre of forest land cleared for human purposes, 7 acres of forest is cleared for grazing livestock or growing livestock feed. This includes federal land that is leased for cattle-grazing purposes. This policy greatly accelerates the destruction of our precious forests.
In order to support cattle grazing, South and Central America are destroying their rainforests. These rainforests contain close to half of all the species on Earth and many medicinal plants. Over a thousand species a year are becoming extinct, and most of these are from rainforest and tropical settings. This practice also causes the displacement of indigenous peoples who have been living in these environments for countless generations.
The factory farm industry is one of the largest polluters of our groundwater due to the chemicals, pesticides, and run-off waste that is inherent in its practices.
Over 60 million people die of starvation every year. This means that we are feeding grain to animals while our fellow humans are dying of starvation in mind-staggering numbers.

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