Session 1

This spring, of 2022, I was fortunate enough to get a grant from SFSU College of Extended Learning, to teach a workshop on Plant Based Cooking. One of our students is a photojournalism major and she was taking gorgeous pictures of all the food we made, so I decided to create a Google Site to share our experience, the recipes, and her photography. This is basically a labor of love for the students who helped this project move forward and a thank you to CEL for allowing this to happen. Who knows, maybe this project may continue into the future (maybe with a book for the students at some point?).

For this workshop, we were using the definition of "Plant Based Cooking" to mean utilizing as many different plant sources for food as we could come up with. We didn't set out to be strictly vegan (in my opinion, "Vegan" means "Vegan" and "Plant Based" means that you are welcome to use whatever animal products you like, but you are making a conscious effort to limit animal sources of food and eat a higher proportion of calories from plants than is common in the Standard American Diet). But as it turns out, even though we left the option open to use a little butter or cheese or eggs, the only real animal product we used was Labne in the Roasted Cauliflower - everything else turned out to be completely vegan, and I don't think we ever missed animal products - and in dishes such as the Hearts of Palm Ceviche, several students couldn't believe that there was no actual fish in it!

As a chef, I found this whole process fascinating because it was amazing to see the creativity that can come from students and teachers exploring something together. While I like tofu and tempeh and some of the meat-substitutes, I think just replacing 'meat' for 'soy' is often an uncreative way to cook and I am much more interested in trying to create meals that are so colorful and flavorful and hit so many different notes that you don't really miss the large chunk of animal protein in the middle of the plate. I hope that creativity comes across through these recipes and photos (all photos, btw, were taken by Tatyana Ekmekjian, unless otherwise labeled as taken by me).

All recipes are my own, except where indicated. I had never made Pinakbet so I modified a version with pork belly and substituted smoked tempeh; the Gallo Pinto was inspired by The Blue Zones Cookbook; and the Yuba "Noodles" with tomatoes is modified from the State Bird Provisions Cookbook. Feel free to use, modify, alter, and pass on any of these for your own cooking experiences! But most of all, please enjoy these all as a jumping off point to explore how YOU want to cook and eat.

Thank you!

Chef Tim Shaw

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEMLj2p__iZ7bbxKo8-_y6w