For flavorful, crispy and versatile tofu: Just grate it

Nisha Vora s evolution as a vegan cook sounds so familiar. When she first decided to go vegan eight years ago, she says, I didn t know how to make my...

Nisha Vora’s evolution as a vegan cook sounds so familiar. When she first decided to go vegan eight years ago, she says, "I didn’t know how to make my food taste interesting.” That’s because, like so many others in her position (including me), she was single-mindedly focused on what she subtracted from her go-to dishes to adapt them to her new diet.

"So once I took out all of the chicken and the fish and the sour cream and the mayo and the butter, I was just left with the other stuff that I was eating, but it just felt so boring and bland,” she told me in a Zoom call from her San Diego home. "And I’m not someone who can just eat to live.”

One she started focusing on the possibilities rather than the limitations - and on the idea of building flavor - everything changed. "I started to realize, okay, I have a cauliflower, so how can I make it the most delicious cauliflower? Rather than just throw it in a stir-fry with a bunch of other vegetables.”

Vora’s new approach led her to leave her job as a lawyer and create Rainbow Plant Life, an incredibly popular website, YouTube channel and Instagram account. The author of "The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook,” Vora took on a bigger task with her follow-up "Big Vegan Flavor” distills her many years of hard-won cooking wisdom into more than 150 recipes, plus tips for building flavor into every meal.

One of the major points of her book is that this is a distinct cuisine with its own principles and strategies, and in that way, she and I are nothing short of kindred spirits. (My new book, "Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking,” employs a similar philosophy - and, coincidentally, was published on the same date as Vora’s.)