Recipe: Roasted Sweet Potato And Asparagus Poboy
Bryant Terry, Vegetable Kingdom
Makes 4 sandwiches
When I lived in New Orleans, ordering a vegetarian poboy meant you would get bread, mayonnaise, iceberg lettuce, and bland tomatoes. This recipe is the type of sandwich that I wish my crew and I could have eaten back in the day. I started conceiving of this recipe in 2012 when I sandwiched some leftover candied sweet potatoes from my book The Inspired Vegan between bread for lunch. While sweet, the Garnet yams also had a savory essence from the miso, molasses, sesame oil, and tamari in the marinade . Since most folks cant imagine a poboy without some deep-fried element, I was reluctant to share a recipe for one that was stuffed with sweet potatoes. That changed when I ran across a poboy on the Food
& Wine website created by chef Kevin Nashan that included roasted sweet potatoes dusted with Cajun seasoning. I coat mine in blackened seasoning instead, and before roasting, I parboil them.
In culinary school, I learned that this method yields a sweeter, creamier roasted sweet potato. I imagine this sandwich sitting at the crossroads of winter and spring, so I add roasted asparagus to the mix. The dense, sweet-savory Garnet yams and the delicate, earthy asparagus are a perfect match. The piquant Creole rémoulade brings everything together. While this sandwich may not visually read as a poboy in the way that most people envision them, you best believe it has the spirit of a classic New Orleans dressed poboy.
Two New Cookbooks That Celebrate Black Vegan Recipes
Amongst all the new plant-based cookbooks, meal kit services and Instagram posts, the boom of plant-based and vegan diets isnt going anywhere the global vegan food market is expected rise 10 percent each year, reaching $24 billion by 2026. But theres an oft-ignored sector that has long been a driver in the vegan movement: Black vegans.
Search plant-based or vegan, and youll find images of yoga pants-clad, blonde women shopping at farmers markets avocado toast in trendy California cafés veggie spring rolls photographed on eclectic handmade ceramics. The new vegan cookbooks Vegetable Kingdom by Bryant Terry and Living Lively by Haile Thomas are two of the latest to celebrate a way of cooking that goes beyond this stereotypical plant-based aesthetic or market trend.
Vegan soul food recipes like his sweet potato and asparagus poboy , millet roux mushroom gumbo, and dirty cauliflower rice pay homage to his Memphis upbringing and time spent in New Orleans, while dishes like jollof-inspired rice and coconut curry crusted cauliflower honor traditional Central and West African recipes. Skipping meat substitutes, Terry focuses on fresh ingredients, bright spices and sound techniques to create his flavorful vegan recipes. He uses heritage grains like teff and fonio for hearty flavor slathers vegetables with jerk marinades, Creole sauce or Blackened seasoning for a zesty boost and uses cooking methods like ash-roasting and pickling to add bold depth to his food.
Praise For Vegetable Kingdom
Phenomenal . . . transforms the kitchen into a site for creating global culinary encounters, this time inviting us to savor Afro-Asian vegan creations.
Angela Y. Davis, distinguished professor emerita at the University of California Santa Cruz
In the great Black American tradition of the remix and doing what you can with what you got, my friend Bryant Terry goes hard at vegetables with a hip-hop eye and a Southern grandmamas nature. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, Bryant wants us to know that once we know vegetables better, we will cook vegetables better. He aint lyin.
W. Kamau Bell, comedian, author, and host of the Emmy Awardwinning series United Shades of America
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Vegetable Kingdom: The Abundant World Of Vegan Recipes
More than 100 beautifully simple recipes that teach you the basics of a great vegan meal centered on real food, not powders or meat substitutesfrom the James Beard Award-winning chef and author of Afro-Vegan Food justice activist and author Bryant Terry breaks down the fundamentals of plant-based cooking in Vegetable Kingdom, showing you how to make delicious meals from popular vegetables, grains, and legumes. Recipes like Dirty Cauliflower, Barbecued Carrots with Slow-Cooked White Beans, Millet Roux Mushroom Gumbo, and Citrus & Garlic-Herb-Braised Fennel are enticing enough without meat substitutes, instead relying on fresh ingredients, vibrant spices, and clever techniques to build flavor and texture.
The book is organized by ingredient, making it easy to create simple dishes or showstopping meals based on whats fresh at the market. Bryant also covers the basics of vegan cooking, explaining the fundamentals of assembling flavorful salads, cooking filling soups and stews, and making tasty grains and legumes. With beautiful imagery and classic design, Vegetable Kingdom is an invaluable tool for plant-based cooking today.
Black Food With Bryant Terry
For indoor events, we will be checking vaccination status and asking for mask use for indoor events when not eating or drinking. Please reach out to our box office for questions regarding these policies.
Critically acclaimed author, chef, and food justice activist Bryant Terry discusses his 2022 James Beard nominated books Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora and Vegetable Kingdom. In conversation with New Haven food justice activist and podcast host Tagan Engel, Terry will speak on his curation of Black Food, a stunning and deeply heartfelt tribute to Black culinary ingenuity and foodways, featuring contributions from more than 100 Black food luminaries from around the globe. He will also delve into Vegetable Kingdom where he breaks down the fundamentals of plant-based cooking for family and friends. Terry will cook up one of his favorite recipes while speaking on his wide breadth of work and using his platform to uplift the works of other BIPOC leaders to give rise to a more healthy, just, and sustainable world for all. As always he will welcome questions and conversation with attendees.
A book signing with Bryant Terry will follow this talk. He will be signing Black Food and Vegetable Kingdom.
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Video Cookbook Review For Afro
I started with something simple. Basil salt. Only two ingredients you can guess them. You just blend and bake to dry out the ingredients. This was to be a star ingredient in a very simple tomato salad from the book.
I was lucky that tomatoes were in season and I had just bought some local sweet, tangy, juicy and delicious heirloom tomatoes. The basil salt went with them beautifully. This was probably the simplest dish in the whole book. The rest gets ranges from just a bit more complex to a whole bunch of work.
I prefer to do it simple and with what I have already so the next recipe I chose was Creamy Red Bell Pepper Sauce. It did call for vegan mayo and you know how I dont love using store bought vegan alternatives for recipes, especially ones I havent tried yet since I hate wasting money. But after a few minutes of blending, I tasted it. This sauce reminds me of cheese whiz. Take that in the greatest way possible though. Its creamy but not too heavy, cheesy but the roasted red pepper flavour is the real flavour highlight here. It was well worth the inclusion of vegenaise.
Ive already made this sauce three times since I tried it and my boyfriend has asked for repeats. You may have seen me make vegan mushroom based po boys before in my Everyday Happy Herbivore Cookbook review. These were totally different as the recipe calls for a much more complicated process on the main ingredient.
The tofu dredging station.
Savory Grits With Slow
Give me a bowl of creamy grits and I’m a happy woman. Give me that same bowl of grits topped with slow-cooked greens and I’ll swoon. So I didn’t hesitate to try out Bryant Terry‘s recipe for savory grits with long-cooked collards in his new cookbook, Afro-Vegan. He based the collard greens component on gomen wat, Ethiopian stewed collards redolent of ginger, garlic, and chiles. These greens are a fine match to his creamy grits, enriched with nutty cashew cream and fragrant vegetable stock. Topped with a drizzle of spicy hot-pepper vinegar, this is a soulful meal that’s hard to resist.
Why I picked this recipe: Grits plus Ethiopian gomen wat sounded like a perfect match.
What worked: Despite the minor pain of using two pots to cook the collards, I loved the way the twice-cooked greens took on a supple, silky texture by the end of cooking. The rich cashew cream was a great way to enrich grits sans butter. I’ll be adding that trick to my repertoire, even when I’m not cooking a vegan meal.
What didn’t: I needed to add extra stock to the greens as they simmered. Most of the cup of stock managed to escape from the pot over the course of 45 minutes and I wanted to keep the greens brothy.
Reprinted with permission from Afro-Vega: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean, and Southern Flavors Remixed by Bryant Terry. Copyright 2014. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House. All rights reserved. Available wherever books are sold.
Recipe Facts
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