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Vegetarian / vegan cookbook recommendations?

AJB Temple

AJB Temple

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Aware that we have some foodies here: anyone got any vegetarian or vegan cookery book recommendations?

In the last year of two we’ve become less enamoured with the quality of meat and fish. Salmon and sea bass farming practices are poor and unhealthy, we’ve gone right off lamb (dislike the smell). We eat a lot of home grown salad, fruit and veg, but it’s the spring dearth now so Lidlald and M&S rule.

Just watched Netflix series about plant based vs omnivore / a study on twins / 3* Eleven Madison Park NY (Daniel Humm). Obviously there's a fair degree of bias, but I would like to enrich my plant based cooking repertoire anyway. Trouble is I’ve never found an inspirational vegan or vegetarian cook book, despite having several in my cook book collection. These include a few generics plus Simon Hopkinson, Amelia Freer, Orell Fussli, and a couple of Ottolengi’s. With the exception of Simon, they’re all a bit evangelistic. Most vegetarian ones rely heavily on cheese to provide fats and flavour, & eggs as binders. Nothing against that but it makes everything taste cheesy / eggy.

I treat cookbooks like reading books, so looking for something interesting and inspirational.
 
Adrian, have a look at this site.
I have downloaded some information to eat healthier, not to give up meat. Can only eat chicken, fish and pork.

veganuary.com

Veganuary | Try Vegan for 31 Days

Since 2014, Veganuary has inspired and supported millions of people all over the world to go vegan for January - and beyond!
veganuary.com veganuary.com


I will e-mail you some of the recipes.
 
Whilst not vegan On Vegetables is excellent for a variety of veg dishes that feel like a meal- to me this best matches what you’re looking for from an ideas perspective but cheese and eggs do appear

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River Cafe Green is a great selection of vegetable dishes with an Italian tilt - big flavours and largely cheese and egg free
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If you’re happy going back to a book when being a vegetarian was a bit more hippy then Moosewood is one of the originals, plenty of recipes that remind me of childhood vegetarian cafes with tie die and that consistent whole foods smell


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Thanks. Helpful. Will check them out. So was the email Phil. Will reply when I get back.

Edit: just ordered 2 of them from Abe for £6.80 including postage. Need to research the more expensive Phaidon one.
 
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AJB Temple said:
Thanks. Helpful. Will check them out. So was the email Phil. Will reply when I get back.
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I edited to say On veg is probably the closest to being a source for ideas- I also read cookbooks like novels and it was a good read through and makes veg centre stage in some dishes that were very different to other cookbooks
 
Thanks. Seems we have a similar approach. I like cookery books that are well written by a chef or food writer, and tell a story of food and maybe travel. Lots of older books had that style where there was something interesting to say. I tend not to buy those typical of the modern formulaic genre of short recipe on one page and big picture on facing page. It's lazy, fast production writing.
 
AJB Temple said:
Aware that we have some foodies here: anyone got any vegetarian or vegan cookery book recommendations?

In the last year of two we’ve become less enamoured with the quality of meat and fish. Salmon and sea bass farming practices are poor and unhealthy, we’ve gone right off lamb (dislike the smell). We eat a lot of home grown salad, fruit and veg, but it’s the spring dearth now so Lidlald and M&S rule.

Just watched Netflix series about plant based vs omnivore / a study on twins / 3* Eleven Madison Park NY (Daniel Humm). Obviously there's a fair degree of bias, but I would like to enrich my plant based cooking repertoire anyway. Trouble is I’ve never found an inspirational vegan or vegetarian cook book, despite having several in my cook book collection. These include a few generics plus Simon Hopkinson, Amelia Freer, Orell Fussli, and a couple of Ottolengi’s. With the exception of Simon, they’re all a bit evangelistic. Most vegetarian ones rely heavily on cheese to provide fats and flavour, & eggs as binders. Nothing against that but it makes everything taste cheesy / eggy.

I treat cookbooks like reading books, so looking for something interesting and inspirational.
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Sam's original book was apparently Fuss Free Vegan 101 everyday recipes. London Bridge Books had a copy on eBay for £8 inc delivery so I grabbed that to see what her recipes are like.

We are not making the slightest attempt to go vegan. However, I know that by summer my wife will be producing a multitude of veg: peas, beans, sweetcorn, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes etc. Last year to cope with this I made a lot of blanched veg, vacu packed and froze them. Surplus toms were made into passata and bolognese bases also vacu packed and frozen. We picked quite a lot of lemons. This supplied us through winter but this year I want to try some different things. Clearly the guy at No 11 Madison knows what he is doing, but it is incredibly labour intensive.
 
How can any one not like lamb? However, if you don’t you don’t.

We are not by any means vegetarians. But we don’t actually eat much meat. Because my normal cooking is Asian. Which uses very little meat. But I am probably teaching my grandmother to suck eggs (another way of going veggie, I suppose).

So I have very few solely veggie cook books.

But try

Thai Vegetarian Cooking, Vatcharin Bumichitra, ISBN 1851458913

Vegetarian Thai, Jackum Brown, ISBN 0600607143

Middle Eastern Vegetarian Cooking, David Scott, ISBN 0712652620
 
Thanks. I will have a look. My fairly limited experience of cooking Thai food is that fish paste, shrimp paste and cilantro are commonly used. My wife really hates Cilantro and turns up her nose at shrimp paste (and bonito flakes for that matter) which is a bit inconvenient.
 
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We both LOVE/ENJOY Thai food.
Struggle to find a decent authentic one.
There is/was a chain of Simply Asia. They did a very good Green and Red curry.
The advantage was I could choose the meat in it. Chicken or fish.
 
AJB Temple said:
Thanks. I will have a look. My fairly limited experience of cooking Thai food is that fish paste, shrimp paste and cilantro are commonly used. My wife really hates Cilantro and turns up her nose at shrimp paste (and bonito flakes for that matter) which is a bit inconvenient.
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Well the veggie thai books I mentioned don’t use fish sauce or shrimp paste (although the thais themselves aren’t that particular). Coriander (pak chii) is a difficult one though. I have been told – with how much veracity I cannot say – that it is a genetic thing, rather like being able (or not) to smell asparagus wee. To some people the taste of coriander is unbearable. I like it. If it is just the leaf then in most dishes you can substitute any of the basils, or mint, or even dill. The roots in pastes: well you can just leave them out. To each their own. My partner can’t eat onions, or anything from the allium family except garlic. Imagine the adaptation of recipes that requires.

Which sort of reminds me of going out in Lisbon with veggie friends. Absolutely normal for vegetarian dishes there to include ham or chicken. Doesn’t count apparently.
 
Cilantro/coriander is adored by wife and I and two daughters, to my eldest daughter it tastes like soap . A real shame as it grows like a weed in our veg plot. Alas, attempts to get it to grow elsewhere in this country have apparently failed.
 
Not being able to use onions would be a real handicap. It's odd how people develop these things. Offspring detests mushrooms, but weirdly really likes truffles.
 
 
Thanks Simon. I had forgotten about Josh Katz. I will get his two books. He's got Ottolenghi history but emerged at about the time that the Pitt Cue book sprang up and such like such as Prime, Hawksmore, and my favourite Neil Rankin's excellent book Low and Slow. I like books by proper chef's that have not been over glossed by publishing house ghosting.

Edit: Bought the Josh Katz books. You can't have too many cookbooks..... :ROFLMAO:
 
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We like Josh Katz a lot. Got to meet and chat to him at the Carmel Fitzrovia soft launch recently. Lovely guy.

My other half is a very keen and very good cook and must have 1000+ recipe books, and Ottolenghi was one of our favourites, still is, but she rates Katz more. Ottolenghi recipes just seem to need so many ingredients. Katz's recipes are tastier in many respects and simpler. I know you've said you've gone off meat, but if you can find a supply of quality pork, his pork belly recipe is outstanding.

I'd also suggest you look at Genevieve Taylor, she does some really tasty veg based dishes (she also has meat and fish books), just bulk buy cumin beforehand! She runs Bristol Fire School out of her garden and the days are fun and interesting.
 
That's interesting Simon. Your other half sounds like me when it comes to cook books, though I have fewer than 1000 😐 . We have not gone off meat at all: just developed an aversion to the smell of lamb for some reason. Used to eat rack and shank (latter casseroled) a lot but then started to dislike the fattiness and aroma. I also found that getting good quality beef where we live is very hit and miss, and butchers around us have lost the plot when it comes to preparing calves liver or even getting hold of sweetbreads. I also really went off farmed salmon when I realised how fatty, ulcerated and disease ridden a lot of it is. But we do eat a fair bit of chicken and pork. My bee mentor has her hives on a farm with a game shoot business, so in season I buy a bit direct from them. Venison in particular. And we get very good quality fish on line from Pesky Fish who sell direct from boat to cook, with next day cold packed delivery https://peskyfish.co.uk/

After a few years of regular use now, I highly recommend Pesky - the pricing is very transparent, (fish prices vary a lot by catch) and is cheaper than the fishmonger in Tunbridge Wells by about 30% or more usually, and both cheaper and fresher than the Waitrose fish counter. Waitrose range has gone badly downhill and is practically all farmed 2 or 3 species, but their mussels are great value if bought on the day they come in.
 
This Veggie route you are going down sounds like a big missed-steak...

(geddit?? missed-steak? badum-tsh!)
 
Simon, the Josh Katz books arrived today. The veg one is exactly what I was looking for. It's really good - some very unusual and imaginative ideas emanating from Middle Eastern cuisine among other things. Strong BBQ adaptability, which I like, and some new flavour ideas that I am not used to. Thank you.
 
Don't have any book recommendations, but we eat quite a lot of veggie / vegan dishes although not being vegan we don't mind if it has the odd but of butter etc. I know you're not going down this route but I don't like that a lot of vegan alternatives are ultra processed, we try to eat as much natural food as we can.

One recommendation on fish, we got a whole salmon at Easter when on offer in Sainsburys, not bought salmon for ages and really wasn't impressed. Didn't match up to the line caught trout from Bewl water. We can get them in the local farm shop and at this time of year when they're in I buy them most weeks and fill the chest freezer!
 
AJB Temple said:
Simon, the Josh Katz books arrived today. The veg one is exactly what I was looking for. It's really good - some very unusual and imaginative ideas emanating from Middle Eastern cuisine among other things. Strong BBQ adaptability, which I like, and some new flavour ideas that I am not used to. Thank you.
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Looks good - have just ordered the Josh Katz book - we like those flavours / are trying to eat more vegetables / use the BBQ more - so should work well I hope!
 
MattS said:
Don't have any book recommendations, but we eat quite a lot of veggie / vegan dishes although not being vegan we don't mind if it has the odd but of butter etc. I know you're not going down this route but I don't like that a lot of vegan alternatives are ultra processed, we try to eat as much natural food as we can.

One recommendation on fish, we got a whole salmon at Easter when on offer in Sainsburys, not bought salmon for ages and really wasn't impressed. Didn't match up to the line caught trout from Bewl water. We can get them in the local farm shop and at this time of year when they're in I buy them most weeks and fill the chest freezer!
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Matt, Bewl water is about 10 mins from me. Who is selling the line caught trout?
 
Necci Game, I think you can buy direct but I get them from the farmshop we use for all our veg - GW Breach & Sons farm (TN12 0EX). They don't always have them in the freezer, think it depends if they've caught any!
 
I've looked through some of the new vegan books now. The Sam Tunbull output is very Random House in style - lots of female superlatives and glossy pictures, including of her. As far as I can gather the cookery book editing team at RH is all female and it shows in a strong house style and layout that pervades their work. Vegan is a big step too far for me, but it's interesting to see the approach. Simon Hopkinson, on the other hand, has on about page 12 of his Vegetarian book, his recipe for chicken broth or stock - just in case you want to add some flavour ;)

Can't help thinking that we have probably hit peak vegan now, at least until factory manufacture of meat like proteins takes over.
 
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