Can anyone recommend me any good Vegetarian cook books

Yes, there’s loads. What style of cooking are you after?

Pfft! Surely everyone can rustle up a half decent omelette! What more do they want, the bloody tree huggers? The moon on a stick?

Veg by Hugh Fernly Whatsisface is good.

Nigel Slater has a couple too..

Must be a good Indian one seeing as so much Indian food is vege (and delicious).

Yes, there’s loads. What style of cooking are you after?

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Into virtually every type of food

Ottolenghi – Plenty is pretty good,

I like Nigel Slater’s recipes too but can’t stand watching him on tv

+1 for Ottolenghi, his winter veggies& cous cous is delicious!!

I like Nigel Slater’s recipes too but can’t stand watching him on tv

Yup ..

Kitchen diaries plus others are good to read – but the chap on tv is just wrong ..

🙂

Quorn did/ do a great cookbook for free (not incl P&P). Obviously incl their recipes but was good.

The Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall one is good. New Vegetarian Kitchen by Nicola Graimes has some nice stuff and any of the Cafe Paradiso ones are worth a punt.

+1 for Hughs book. Very good.

Indian every time

World Food Cafe – Chris and Carolyn Caldicott.
Vegi curry tastic.
Just got their second book (world food cafe 2)

Ottolenghi – Plenty
Carluccio – Vegetables
River Gate Cookbook
Anjum Anand – Indian food made easy
Nige Slater – Appetite
Cranks tends towards worthy with a large emphasis on brown (stuck in the 70s)

Think about how you add texture to your meals, after all most people only eat meat out of habit, lack of imagination and because of the texture. Bulgar wheat, quinoa (which you now can’t eat, sighs), ebly, lentils, pulses etc can all be used successfully to add texture and protein to your food as a flesh replacement.
Quorn is awful – avoid it. It’s non-meat meat for people who want to eat meat but have been told to stop doing it.

Have cooked loads from this:

Hugh FW’s book is great too.

No specific indian recommendations but worth checking out gujarati recipes as it’s a part of India that is more vegetarian than most. Tends to be a very long way from what people generally think of as indian food over here.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Madhur-Jaffreys-World-Vegetarian-Cookbook/dp/0091863643

Fantastic book with 650 recipes from around the world. Great for exploring other cuisines and spices.

World food cafe is great for entertaining but too much faff on a day to day basis – need to many obscure things.

I tend to use the bbc good food vegitarian 30 minute meals book

most people only eat meat out of habit, lack of imagination and because of the texture

🙂
That, and it’s utterly delicious from top to tail, unbelievably versatile and really good for me…

But the World Food Cafe book is good if you’ve got a decent market near you.

what’s wrong with qinoa now? About the only “veggie” mainstay that I wouldnt mind nestling up against a bloody bit of meat. Is it a planet-raping, arctic-melting, hipping-killing, super nasty thingy now?

Leiths vegetarian bible is excellent

I was about to ask the same, why can’t you eat bulgar wheat and quinoa?

Mmm quorn – like eating ground up shoe sole!

Mrs t-r once made me a bolognaise using quorn mince …… One mouthful and it went in the bin couldnt decide what the texture was but it was somewhere between rubber and ball bearings .

Don’t bother- just jump straight to eating more pasta, pizzas, humous etc. We’ve got around 20 dusty veg cookbooks on the shelf that rarely get opened

The boom in quinoa-munching among the middle classes has led to huge price increases for the Peruvians who actually depend on it for daily sustenance rather than as a quirky alternative to couscous. As an example of free market economics it can’t be beaten, with added irony…
I do agree that quinoa is delicious. As an alternative, try faro, a similarly traditional grain but one grown in Italy so buying it won’t starve genuinely poor people.

Bulgar wheat is fine, quinoa is not – as corroded has expanded just above western demand has elevated the cost so the peoe who actually grow it now can’t afford to eat it.
I’ll have to take a look at faro, sounds interesting.

*feels middle-class shame*

Back to Ortolan and foie gras sandwiches for me. It’s the only way to be a good citizen I reckon….

This book has some great recipes, regardless that it is vegan.

http://www.theppk.com/books/veganomicon-the-ultimate-vegan-cookbook/

She also has some good ideas on her website and blog.

Bulgar wheat is fine, quinoa is not – as corroded has expanded just above western demand has elevated the cost so the peoe who actually grow it now can’t afford to eat it.
I’ll have to take a look at faro, sounds interesting.

I read an article about how quinoa was evil. I then read another article saying that was bollocks, so I dunno.

What’s difference between quinoa (going beyond the price that locals can afford) and meat? And loads of other food stuffs for that matter. The quinoa story gets circulated as a way of laughing at rich vegetarians, but the exact same laugh could be had about chocolate, or a hundred other things.

Any good vegetarian cook books?

It’s important to cook only free range vegetarians. Factory farmed vegetarians are full of hormones and may contain horse.

the exact same laugh could be had about chocolate

Yes, of course, because there are people in South America for whom chocolate is their main, even sole, source of nutrition… The problem with quinoa is that it went from being an essential food to a cash crop, but with nothing stepping in to replace it.

BTW, that should be farro with a double R, of course, as those of you who have looked up Portugal or the Faroe Islands may have realised.

Doesn’t have to be a staple for the same argument to apply. Not exact-same examples, but all in the same area. In other examples there is displacement of staple crops in favour of luxuries for us. Biodiesel is another example – price of maize goes us because we want the illusion of greener fuel.

So – the prevalence of the quinoa story is more to do with pointing at vegetarians than anything else. Meat is much worse, but there isn’t so much enthusiasm for knocking meat eaters.

This guy is good. I use the masala sauce from this with different kinds of dried beans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVgblA85ro

And also fry your cheese and stick it in peas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvjQ8HkuHME

I bought a pressure cooker last year to cook beans from dry, use it all the time.

I used to use a fair bit of quinoa, I don’t any more though because I try to purchase UK grown food as much as possible these days (and have also moved away from carb heavy meals). Not heard about this controversy with it before (so thanks for bringing it to my attention). There really isn’t a comparable alternative to it – which is why I suppose it’s so popular now – although as pointed out it is a totally un-essential luxury for us despite being a staple food for another culture. My local wholefoods shop does a “fairtrade” quinoa, don’t know if that is of any help to the poor old Peruvians though?