Chef Rene Johnson releases new vegan soul food cookbook, From My Heart to Your Table
Chef Rene Johnson has released her new cookbook, From My Heart to Your Table, featuring vegan and healthier traditional soul food. Her unique coffee table-style cookbook shares easy to follow recipes your holiday guests will love, along with personal stories and scrapbook-style pages, and some amazing tips on how to make healthier, plant-based versions of everyone’s favorite appetizers, entrees, and of course, desserts.
Chef Rene is known for taking her grandmother’s homespun southern soul food recipes and making them every bit as flavorful and culturally relevant, without many of the harmful fats added to traditional comfort food dishes.
Chef Rene’s has many celebrity followers, with clients ranging from Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris to actor Danny Glover, author Dr. Cornel West, California Governor Gavin Newsom, multi-platinum selling music group, Tony! Toni! Toné, and top execs at Google and YouTube.
“Vice President Kamala Harris has a sweet tooth,” says Chef Rene. “Her favorites were the desserts I made for her event, like my mini sweet potato pies, mini vegan cupcakes, and mini homemade vegan chocolate chip cookies.”
“California Governor Gavin Newson throws a yearly event for Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and they loved my vegan greens, picnic potato salad, mac and ‘cheese,’ vegan candied yams, and hot water cornbread.” But, says Rene, “the vegan quinoa ‘meatloaf’ was Gavin’s favorite.”
“Actor Danny Glover gravitated towards my vegan beans and rice. That was his favorite by far,” says Rene.
As far as more traditionally prepared, yet healthier dishes, Rene shares, “Dr. Cornell West enjoyed the jerk turkey meatballs, mini mac and cheese bites, and he also loved my vegan red beans and rice. Then he dug into my blackberry jam cupcakes.”
From My Heart to Your Table features all of the celebratory holiday food appetizers, entrees, and desserts Chef Rene Johnson is famous for, from Hollywood and Silicon Valley to Washington, DC.
A true pioneer of the healthier soul food and vegan soul food movements, Chef Rene’s food is so flavorful and delicious, you won’t miss the meat and dairy, or the excess fat.
Some of Chef Rene’s vegan soul food dishes include: fresh tomato succotash, smothered cabbage, vegan dirty rice, vegan fried okra bites, cashew “cream” sauce, vegan butter beans, mini-quinoa and spinach cakes, and quinoa meatloaf.
More traditional fare featured in Chef Rene’s cookbook includes: hot water corn bread, junky black eyed peas aka “cold day chicken soup,” sticky barbeque wings, big ol’ pot of gumbo, grandmother’s fried chicken, off-the-hook ox-tails, the “mac attack” mac and cheese, salmon croquettes, stewed salmon and grits, and more. “The beautiful part is that you can mix and match traditional and vegan dishes for the holidays. It doesn’t have to be one or the other,” she says.
There is also a healthy mix of dessert recipes for staples such as sweet potato pecan pie, peach cobbler, blackberry jam cupcakes, vegan chocolate chip cookies, and her signature “Mama Cake (yellow cake with chocolate icing).”
