Book Reviews: Vegetarian Recipe Collections

Leith’s Vegetable Bible

Polly Tyrer

The title of this classic collection from Leith’s culinary institute, has changed from ‘Leith’s Vegetarian Bible’, and now reflects the fact that this is a useful guide to all things vegetable-related, to suit all cooks, not only vegetarians. This is a huge book, with almost 1,000 recipes, and the author admits in the introduction that it was difficult to know where to stop.

There is plenty of useful information with several conversion tables, wine quantities and oven temperatures, and this book presents the foundations of cooking very well, as you would expect from a recipe collection coming from a cookery school. In this respect it is ideal for keen beginners, particularly as it includes recipes for various basics like pastry, sauces, mayonnaise, pancakes and stock. It also includes articles on vegetarian nutrition, food safety, special ingredients and useful techniques, which will come in handy for anyone new to cooking, or to vegetarian cooking in particular.

The recipes are split into sections depending on their main ingredient, including leafy greens, root vegetables, mushrooms, beans, rice, pasta, eggs, cakes, biscuits, bread and accompaniments. Each section has an introduction which talks about key foods and how they can each be stored and cooked, which makes the book a handy resource even if you just want to check how to cook some vegetables simply for a side dish. There are also some useful tips (e.g. how to remove the choke from an artichoke) and reference tables, including a list of potato varieties.

The recipes have familiar ingredients on the whole, so you shouldn’t have too much of a headache searching for unusual items at the supermarket. There are a handful of recipes that use Quorn, but there is no heavy reliance on veggie-specific products which means that this book is well-suited to new vegetarians, or to people cooking for a mixed audience of veggies and meat-eaters.

There are a handful of glossy photo pages but most of the collection is not illustrated, so you’ll have to guess what the final dish should look like. However, most of the recipes are relatively straight-forward, and if this book was expanded beyond 561 pages in order to include photo’s, you wouldn’t be able to lift it onto the kitchen work-surface!

This is a practical book which includes more recipes than you could cook in years, and which presents everyday dinners, not just dinner-party food.

The Cranks Bible

Nadine Abensur

This collection is from vegetarian chef Nadine Abensur, who was Food Director at the UK veggie restaurant group, Cranks, for five years. The author was born in Morocco to French-Jewish parents and now lives between London and Australia, and this range of influences is evident in the book as the 200 recipes seem to be drawn from all over the world – with everything from baklava to borscht to soda bread.

The book includes sections on spring and summer veg, autumn and winter veg, beans, pasta, rice, dressings, fruit, chocolate, and baking. The recipes are separated by pages that give general information about the ingredients including how they are typically cooked. Tofu is included in some of the recipes but meat-substitute products are not a major feature in the book and most of the recipes include ingredients that are relatively easy to get hold of, with the odd exception e.g. pink ginger cordial. It also has some slightly unusual veggie additions, including vegetarian gravy, and veggie sushi.

This isn’t vegetarian brown rice, no-meat = no fun, punishment food! This is a glossy book with colourful photo’s, showing a lot of the raw ingredients but very few images of complete recipes. So for those who like to see how a dish is supposed turn out, this might be a slight draw-back. It is a lovely book however, with a nice balance between  familiar everyday recipes and the more exotic.

Delia’s Vegetarian Collection

Delia Smith

Delia has worked in food for over 40 years, and is the UK’s best-selling cookery writer, so if anyone can produce a great collection of recipes it should be her. And indeed, this is another good collection of over 250 veggie recipes, albeit in a strangely unwieldy size.

The recipes are in sections including soups, starters and sides, eggs, cheese, pasta, grains, food for friends, simply vegetables, and puddings. Most of the ingredients are relatively easy to get hold of, and Delia even lists any special equipment you’ll need (e.g. a blender). This is useful if like me, you have a tendency to dive in to a recipe, only realising half-way through that you’re missing a vital tool! A list of suppliers is included if you do find that you’re missing something that you can’t get hold of in the shops.

A selection of basic recipes appears, including guacamole and mayonnaise, as well as more elaborate dishes like Tunisian aubergine salad. Recipes for veggie sausages and sausage-rolls are also included if you fancy making your own. As you’d expect from the woman who brought us ‘How to Cook’, the instructions have a friendly tone, and explain things simply for us novices, avoiding chef-speak e.g. ‘the vegetables should be in very fine bits’.

Finally, this is the only one of the three books reviewed here that includes a list stating which of the recipes are suitable for vegans.

Important note: All of these books include parmesan in some recipes. True parmesan is not vegetarian, so substitute this for a vegetarian parmesan-style cheese instead.

At the time of writing all of these books are available on Amazon.