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Nisha Vora

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Nisha Vora
OccupationVegan/Plant-based cookbook author
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
Harvard Law School
SubjectVegan/Plant-based cookbooks
Notable worksBig Vegan Flavor: Techniques and 150 Recipes to Master Vegan Cooking (2024)
The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook: Wholesome, Indulgent Plant-Based Recipes (2019)

Nisha Vora is an American Vegan/Plant-based cookbook author and blogger.

Early life and education

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Vora's parents emigrated from Mumbai, India[1] to New Jersey in 1982.[2][3] Her father, who is a physician, moved the family to Barstow, California, when he heard that there was a need for doctors there,[2] and Vora grew up in Barstow.[1][4]

At the age of 14, Vora began to teach herself how to cook by watching chefs such as the Ina Garten and Alton Brown on the Food Network,[2] spending time in the cookbook section of bookstores,[4] and learning from her mother, who created Indian vegetarian cuisine.[1][2]

Vora's family had given her three career paths to choose from (medicine, engineering, law), so she chose law.[4] She continued to cook for her friends in college and law school,[2] and received her degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009[2] and her JD from Harvard Law School in 2012.[5]

Career

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After law school, Vora worked in "a big law firm and a smaller nonprofit," but realized that she did not like the legal profession.[2][4] She used cooking and eventually food blogging as a way to cope with the stress of legal work, and became involved in food photography and recipe development.[4] Ultimately, she left her career as a lawyer in 2016 in order to focus fully on being a vegan food blogger, which was "inspired by documentaries about factory farming."[2]

In 2017, Vora worked for a food startup while maintaining her social media presence.[4] In 2018, she was contacted by Penguin-Random House with an offer to turn recipes from her fledgling vegan cooking blog, "Rainbow Plant Life," into a book (The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook: Wholesome, Indulgent Plant-Based Recipes, 2019).[2][4] Vora does credit law school with the writing, research, and analytical skills needed for her current work saying that when she "was developing a chocolate chip recipe, I did a mountain of research on ingredient ratios in non-vegan chocolate chip cookies, the percentage of butter, the percentage of fat, the percentage of eggs, so that I could come up with a recipe that tastes just as delicious and is just as chewy and has crispy edges like a regular chocolate chip cookie. I bring this super analytical lens that I think comes from having that background as a law student and as a lawyer.”[2]

In 2024, Gotham named her cooking channel, Rainbow Plant Life one of the "8 Vegetarian and Vegan Youtube Channels That Make Plant-Based Cooking Easy."[6]

The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook

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Forbes named her first cookbook, The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook: Wholesome, Indulgent Plant-Based Recipes (2019) as one of the "Best Vegan Cookbooks" of 2019,[7] Food & Wine called it one of "The 18 Best Vegan Cookbooks for Every Type of Meal" in 2023,[8] Parade listed it as one of the "Best Vegan Cookbooks to Add to Your Collection Right Now" in 2019,[9] and Good Housekeeping named it as one of the "14 Best Healthy Cookbooks, According to Cooking and Nutrition Experts" in 2023.[10] VegNews listed The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook as one of the "Top 100 Vegan Cookbooks of All Time" in 2024.[11]

Big Vegan Flavor

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Her second cookbook, Big Vegan Flavor: Techniques and 150 Recipes to Master Vegan Cooking (2024) was #3 on the The New York Times Best Seller list for the week of September 22, 2024.[12] The Washington Post Food and Dining Editor Joe Yonan notes that: "What Vora does so beautifully in Big Vegan Flavor is break down plant-based cooking into its crucial elements, writing about how to achieve various textures." He also underscores Vora's thesis that "this is a distinct cuisine with its own principles and strategies."[13] Kristin Montemarano, in Food & Wine, also gave Big Vegan Flavor a positive review stating that there "are no words to describe how excited I am for this cookbook! It's filled with all of Nisha Vora's incredible knowledge of vegan cooking, from the building blocks of your pantry to the essential flavor-building steps you should always be taking. It's partially a book for knowledge and partially a recipe book filled with truly flavorful dishes like her close-to-the-heart Dal Tadka to epic skillet lasagnas (yum!), all made vegan. But, as the book states, nothing, and I mean nothing ever lacks in flavor.”[14]

Books

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  • Big Vegan Flavor: Techniques and 150 Recipes to Master Vegan Cooking. Avery, 2024. ISBN 978-0593328934.
  • The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook: Wholesome, Indulgent Plant-Based Recipes. Avery, 2019. ISBN 978-0525540953.

References

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  1. ^ a b c Sen, Mayukh (September 20, 2023). "How kala namak, black salt, went from Indian staple to vegan star". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Zulkey, Clair (September 2024). "From Law Books to Cookbooks:Nisha Vora's vegan journey". Harvard Magazine.
  3. ^ Vora, Nisha. "About Nisha". rainbowplantlife.com. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Neelakandan, Laya (July 14, 2022). "Why this former lawyer went vegan, quit her job and started a food blog". Today. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  5. ^ Tenorio, Rich (August 8, 2019). "Planting herself in the right career". Harvard Gazette. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  6. ^ Tanna, Mansi (May 14, 2024). "8 Vegetarian and Vegan Youtube Channels That Make Plant-Based Cooking Easy". Gotham. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  7. ^ Demarest, Abigail (September 3, 2019). "The Best Vegan Cookbooks". Forbes. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  8. ^ Makhijani, Pooja (November 2, 2023). "The 18 Best Vegan Cookbooks for Every Type of Meal". Food & Wine. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  9. ^ Pajer, Nicole (December 26, 2019). "The Best Vegan Cookbooks to Add to Your Collection Right Now". Parade. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  10. ^ Campbell, Courtney (October 17, 2023). "14 Best Healthy Cookbooks, According to Cooking and Nutrition Experts". Good Housekeeping. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  11. ^ Pointing, Charlotte (January 16, 2024). "The Top 100 Vegan Cookbooks of All Time". VegNews. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  12. ^ "NYT Bestseller List: Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous". The New York Times Best Seller list. September 22, 2024. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  13. ^ Yonan, Joe (September 14, 2024). "For flavorful, crispy and versatile tofu: Just grate it". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 16, 2024.
  14. ^ Rothbarth, Adam (September 28, 2024). "We Tested Hundreds of Kitchen Products in September, and We're Utterly In Love With These 13". Food & Wine. Retrieved September 28, 2024.
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