Big 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
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]
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
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 veganfood 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 (2019)
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]
The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook: Wholesome, Indulgent Plant-Based Recipes. Avery, 2019. ISBN978-0525540953.
Big Vegan Flavor (2024)
Her second cookbook, Big Vegan Flavor: Techniques and 150 Recipes to Master Vegan Cooking (2024) was #3 on The New York Times Best Seller list for the week of September 22, 2024.[12] Kristin Montemarano states in Food & Wine that it is "filled with...essential flavor-building steps you should always be taking,"[13] while Washington Post Food and Dining Editor Joe Yonan suggests that it demonstrates how a Plant-based diet "is a distinct cuisine with its own principles and strategies."[14] In addition, New York (magazine) listed Big Vegan Flavor as one of "The Best Cookbooks to Gift This Year [2024],"[15]Chowhound lists it as one of the "15 Best Vegetarian Cookbooks Of 2024,"[16]Civil Eats includes it in its "2024 Food and Farming Holiday Book Gift Guide,"[17] columnist Avery Yale Kamila listed it among "The year’s best vegan cookbooks" in the Portland Press Herald,[18] and VegNews listed it as one of "The Best Vegan Cookbooks of 2024."[19]
Big Vegan Flavor: Techniques and 150 Recipes to Master Vegan Cooking. Avery, 2024. ISBN978-0593328934.