Vegetable Kingdom

Vegetable Kingdom: The Abundant World of Vegan Recipes, often shortened to Vegetable Kingdom, is a 2020 cookbook by Bryant Terry. It received positive reviews and won an NAACP Image Award. Recipes are based on the cuisines of the African diaspora. The book provides a song pairing for each dish.

Soundtrack

For each recipe Bryant suggests a song pairing, which he calls the recipe's "soundtrack".^[1] The pairings include Cab Calloway’s "Jumpin Jive" with a recipe for stuffed peppers, “Flat of the Blade” from Massive Attack with a recipe for dirty cauliflower, and Solange’s “Stay Flo” with a recipe for mashed kabocha.^[2][3] Bryant, who comes from a musical family, has said he considers food and music inseparable and refers to his pairings as "cooking as collage".^[1][2]

Influences

According to Francis Lam, Terry has said his "approach to cooking is inspired by hip-hop producers", which Lam describes as "taking a little bit of this, taking a little bit of that, and remixing things."^[1] The recipes are vegan and based around the flavors of the African diaspora.^[4][3]

Reception

The book was one of Splendid Table's Spring Picks in 2020.^[1] It received a starred review from Publishers Weekly^[5] and won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Instructional.^[6] The New Yorker called it "a stylish, inspiring love letter" to cooking with vegetables.^[4] Joe Yonan, writing in The Washington Post, said "I can’t think of the last time I marked this many dishes to try, the very first time I flipped through a book."^[3] It was named to several "best of" lists, including The New Yorker, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Food & Wine, and Vogue.^{[4][3][7][8][9][10]} VegNews named Vegetable Kingdom one of the "Top 100 Vegan Cookbooks of All Time" in 2024.^[11]

Publication

The hardcover and ebook were released by Penguin on February 11, 2020.^[12]

References