To finish off the American Vegan Kitchen week of the cookbook challenge, I threw away any pretences of making wholesome food. That’s not this book’s forte, and I like it that way. For dinner we treated ourselves to the all-American incrediburgers and beer-battered onion rings.

All American incrediburgers and beer-battered onion rings

Although the original burger recipe calls for reconstituted TVP, I instead used finely chopped tempeh. I found that the TVP in the ribs from the same book tended to fall out of the seitan dough, and was quite difficult to work with. I was curious to see whether softer tempeh would be a better alternative. I also had a block sitting in the fridge needing to be used- but let’s go with my intrepid adventurer excuse. It worked better than the TVP, although I still found the dough quite stiff, hence my misshapen burgers. Appearances aside, these were good. A little too ‘meaty’ for my liking- I actually like veggie burgers that taste like veggie burgers. But these are a fun, junkier-tasting change. And really, how can you go wrong with burgers?

The star here for me was the onion rings. Made of onions, beer and grease, these were always going to be a winner. With some salt added to the beer batter, these would be artery-clogging perfection. I’ll definitely be making these again and again.

American Vegan Kitchen was one of those books that I was initially unsure about. The ingredient lists seemed long (don’t let this put you off, it’s just all those delicious spices!), and a lot of recipes didn’t seem to jump out at me. But after spending some time in this book’s company, I’m pretty pleased that it’s found a place on my bookshelf. Choosing this one final recipe was difficult, because there are so many that Chadwiko and I wanted to try- Chicago-style deep dish pizza, avocado wedges, garlic pretzels. You haven’t seen the last of American Vegan Kitchen here.

You just might have to wait until I’ve lost the kilo or so that I’m sure I put on this week.