The Vegetarian Option

his is the book I won from Serious Eats. It is filled with wonderful color photographs. The author is from London and is noted on the back cover as one of the UK's finest food writers. He has two other books, Roast Chicken and Other Stories and Second Helpings of Roast Chicken. You can tell by how some of the book is worded that it isn't an American Cookbook. I still enjoy reading the little blurbs included with each recipe and the recipes themselves.

The book is divided into the following sections: Vegetables, Herbs, Pasta, Legumes & Grains, Rice, Eggs, and finally, Fruit. There is one recipe from Mario Batali included in the book, almond and jalapeno relish. Before the recipe the author writes about his first trip to NY and meeting Mario at a party at Babbo. They share mutual friends.

Some of the recipes look and sound very inviting and I really enjoyed the tomato recipe I made recently for the ingredient contest, Tomato Salad with Basil Cream Dressing and Olive Oil. One problem with this book for me though is that quiet a few of the recipes call for ingredients that are either hard for me to find or too expensive for my budget. Some of those things are saffron, agar flakes, sunflower oil, Amontillado Sherry, Chervil, and carnaroli rice. I do occasionally purchase saffron but if you made several of the recipes that call for it, it could push up those numbers on the cash register considerably. He also uses Maldon Sea Salt in many of his recipes and white pepper. He says he prefers white over black pepper but you can use whatever you like.

There probably aren't a lot of recipes in this one I will make but it's a fun read and the photos are very easy on the eyes. Sarita does want to borrow this one and make the cauliflower with cheese and I can't wait for cooler weather to try the Lima Beans with Sage, Olive Oil and Dried Chili and the Thyme, Onion and Gruyere Tart sounds like one I'd make as well. I think I'll try the macaroni and cheese with tomatoes soon, with some of our garden tomatoes. So even though there are recipes I know I wouldn't make there are also some I will. I guess that is probably true of most of our cookbooks. I probably wouldn't have bought this one for myself but I'm sure glad I won a copy.