What I really like about it is the variety offered throughout the book, from a really yummy Mixed berry couscous breakfast dish to Roast beetroot and onion wedge salad to Thai tempeh. There are a lot of very yummy (and very easy) dishes to whet the appetite. I can just imagine tucking in at the end of a cold winter's day to a big bowl of Chickpea and herb dumpling soup, some Pumpkin and basil lasagne or the very delicious sounding Mushroom moussaka. There are also a few recipes though that just miss the mark as far as I am concerned, such as the Vegetable shapes with créme fraîche and fried leek and the Stir fried tofu with orange and fresh pineapple. Still, the book is very accessible to the non-vegetarian audience, so I can forgive this.
As far as vegetarian cookbooks go, this one is somewhere in the middle of the range. There is an assumption made that the audience are all ovo-lacto vegetarians and quite happily eat both dairy and eggs, so no effort has been made to include a key as to which recipes would suit which type of vegetarian, or even to simply mark out recipes suited to a vegan audience. This marks it as a book written and published for this audience by those who are not vegetarian themselves, which is not a problem, however there are better suited books to the hardcore V's.
Recommended for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike - I wish my mother had had this book twenty years ago. In fact if you are still at home and vegetarian - get this for your mother ~ you might not end up having pasta napolitana with tinned pineapple thrown into it.
- Kath
