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The Best Vegetarian Recipes: From Greens to Grains, from Soups to Salads: 200 Bold Flavored Recipes: member book reviews

(2 reviews)

This cookbook seems geared toward helping the vegetarian to prepare a well balanced meal. It does this with not only great recipes but also specific menu advice and myth busting about vegetarian diets and health.

The book has the typical sections - salads, soups, grains and beans, etc. In addition, it does have a nice dessert section.

There are no photographs, but the book has excellent descriptions. Martha Rose Shulman is a deft food writer, and her recipes are easy to follow.

The recipes I tested from this book all worked well, and I especially enjoyed the pear, arugula and walnut salad.

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This is such a reliable vegetarian cookbook. I bought it when I was learning about vegetarian cooking and wanted to cook more vegetarian food. I like that Martha Rose doesn't moralise about vegetarianism, she leaves it up to the reader to choose a vegetarian diet or to be just using the recipes to increase their vegie intake.

The style is great for new cooks as she offers advice on forming a well stocked pantry, ideas on how to match the recipes together to form a meal and also offers suggestions on how to vary recipes. This makes for a flexible cookbook which offers a sound set of base skills for a vegetarian cook as well as some interesting recipes. The recipes are also quite health conscious but not stingy, she'll reduce the oil in a recipe but no so far as to compromise flavour.

I find myself coming back to this book again and again as a reference for hummous, stocks, soup, tofu marinades and always finds she renews my resolve to up the number of vegetarian meals in my diet. The book is strong on Mediterranean recipes, has a clear mexican influence which was fairly new to me as an Australian but i'm sure is common in the US. The asian style greens and tofu recipes work well. For indian or south-east asian recipes look elsewhere.

(edited 6th April 2010) report

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