All-round, vegetable-focused, up to date food science book with recipes for home cooks

Question

I am a home cook and want to get more serious about cooking. We have books by Ottolenghi, Meera Sodha, and Alice Zaslavsky, and can handle the complexity of these recipes, but what I would like to improve on is understanding why things go wrong when they do, what the role of certain ingredients / methods is, the results of different combinations of flavors, etc.

For example, Meera Sodha wrote on one recipe that a little acidity in the form of lemon / lime juice can help reduce spiciness and now I use that elsewhere when the spiciness got a little bit out of hand and yogurt or coconut milk are not available / don't fit. However, overall, the books we have are recipe books and the focus is not on a better foundational understanding.

For baking, we recently got Nicola Lamb's SIFT and it is absolutely great. It is half recipes, half encyclopedia, and the two are cross-referenced. The reference section is full of information about how ingredients react to each other, the application and uses of different methods, etc. You can pick a recipe and first read the handful of reference sections relevant to it. This makes it possible to understand why the recipe is the way it is, so you actually learn something. At the same time you are learning by example, so it's not as dry as a textbook. I'd love to have something like this for cooking.

I have looked around, but have not been able to find something yet. My wishes are the following (I'd still be interested in books that don't fit all these points):

• Should have information on methods, explaining when they are used and what can go wrong.
• Should have information on ingredients, explaining their role in dishes (and, perhaps, replacements).
• Should have explanation about flavors and textures, which combine well together (and why).
• Should be vegetable-focused – we are vegetarian. If <20% is dedicated to meat/fish that would be acceptable, but more than that would be a waste. If there were sections on replacing common non-vegan products with vegan alternatives, that wouldn't go amiss, too.
• Should be all-round in terms of scope of the reference sections and cuisine in the recipes. Ottolenghi's Flavour has detailed explanations about a couple of preparation methods and ingredients, but is limited in scope and the selection is rather arbitrary. According to some GoodReads reviews, Nik Sharma's The Flavor Equation is good but many recipes are from Indian cuisine.
• Should be up to date: this is why I'm not sure about Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking (1984, revised 2004). The 2004 edition is a massive update, but is 20 years old again, and a lot has happened in that time (especially in the vegan/vegetarian context).
• Should have recipes. As explained above, I think this is great about SIFT. I am not ready to sit down and read a textbook cover to cover, but I would like to pick recipes one by one and learn from the relevant reference sections as I go along. (Another reason to avoid On Food and Cooking.)
• Recipes should have photos. If the reference sections don't have photos, that's acceptable, but I really prefer to cook something if I can see what it is supposed to look like in the end.
• There can (should) be some chemistry, but not too advanced: I know what pH is and that a protein is long, and such things allow me to understand on an intuitive level how air can get trapped in an egg foam, for example. But I'm not ready to go beyond that intuitive level and learn the exact chemical formulas.
• I have seen some books that also go into details about the history of methods and ingredients. This does not have my interest, but I would accept it if there are some remarks on it as long as it is not the book's primary focus.

Is there something similar to SIFT for cooking?

_{(I know that "shopping questions" are generally discouraged, but have tried to ask this following the guidelines in the cookbook tag wiki.)}

Answer 1

The website cookwell.com by Ethan Chlebowski

This is, in my opinion, a great resource for a combination of recipes and further information on the effect or role of certain ingredients. It highlights why an ingredient is important here and often gives substitutions or alternative versions of a recipe.

Two caveats

• it is not only vegetarian recipes. However, I cook mostly vegan myself and while some recipes are very specific to the meat that is being handled, often it is easy to substitute. Especially because there are many vegetarian recipes as well (so you can mix-and-match) and precisely because the role of ingredients is explained it is easier to find a substitute.
• it is a website and not a book. I'd prefer a book myself, but do find the click-through and pop-up style of the website enjoyable as well.

I don't know if that is relevant here, but I am not affiliated with this website in any way.

Answer 2

You could try the books Food Lab By J Kenji Lopez-Alt or Salt, Fat, Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat

Oh, I completely forgot about this ones. Look up How To Cook Everything Vegetarian: Completely Revised Tenth Anniversary Edition by Mark Bittman and The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook by America's Test Kitchen. Both are very thorough and technique and in the case of ATK science based.