Legendary chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten is calling his new meatless eatery, abcV, a vegetable restaurant rather than vegetarian, but a plant-based menu by any other name still focuses on the veggies and leaves the animal products out. And, whether you call it plant- based, vegetable, vegetarian or vegan, seasoning and spices are vital to creating flavorful dishes that appeal to herbivores and omnivores alike.
Using seasonings to recreate the flavors of childhood or bring back other happy culinary memories of days gone by can be the key to creating vegan food that appeals to the masses, said one vegan chef.
“[Recently] I was trying to recreate borscht,” said Fanny Fuentes-Phalon, chef and co-owner of Mundo Vegan in Montclair, N.J. “I remember how I used to eat it in the East Village many years ago. It was missing something and we were going through the recipe and the sous chef said ‘Hey, it doesn’t have any dill.’ We added dill to the soup and it was like ‘Wow, there it is.’”
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