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I have decided to move to a much more plant based diet and am looking for some inspiration, I have already just ordered the "moosewood restaurant cooks at home", which seams to be quite highly regarded, I don't want to complicate stuff too much so looking for quite simple stuff to make in my small poorly equipped kitchen.
Oh, I was coming to recommend Flavour by Ottolenghi, but then I read the keep it simple part ... sorry! There is Veg by Jamie, but that may or may not make your blood boil depending on how you feel about him.
I asked the exact same question from my vegetarian colleague last week and got this list (I've not got as far as buying any of these yet so no personal experience, the comments after each one are his)
The Green Roasting Tin - Rukmini Iyer - (easy good recipes)
One pot, pan, planet - Anna Jones
Natural flavour - Craig & Shaun McAnuff (Carribean,good)
Veg - Jamie Oliver (Bit simple / average)
BOSH - Henry Firth (Bit simple / average)
River Cottage Veg Everyday! is pretty good and covers mains + sides + desserts etc.
Plenty by Ottolenghi has some wonderful recipes, but as pointed out above they're not simple, and nearly all of them require some weird ingredient you just know you'll use once, then it'll either go off or it'll be gathering dust at the back of the cupboard for the next 5 years...
The original Moosewood Cookbook was the first one we bought when we became vegetarian in 1989. Still use it today. Green Roasting Tin is a good shout. There are a few recipes in Arto de Haroutunian's 'Classic Vegetarian Cookery' that we return to over and over, but this one you'll probably have to find second-hand. Also now only available second-hand is Lesley Waters 'Broader than Beans', but that has some nice easy recipes that are really tasty.
One pot, pan, planet - Anna Jones
+1
Probably verging on the “not simple” but her recipes are always very tasty in my experience, “Dinner” by Meera Sodha.
Online BBC Good Food is a generally good source for reliable+tasty recipes, just make sure you read the comments before starting.
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/vegetarian-dinner-recipes
Serious Eats is another personal fave, and again you can filter by vegetarian:
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes-by-diet-5117779
I've just bought Yasmin Khan's 'Sabzi' for my sister off the back of her chat with Cerys Matthews on Sunday.
Prasad by Kaushy Patel is amazing albeit you do need to love Indian food. Also a big fan of the river cottage veg everyday book. There's a courgette rice pie in there that's become a summer favourite.
Sabrinha's books are great. Even the non vege ones have good vege stuff, I haven't tried this all vege book
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bazaar-Vibrant-vegetarian-plant-based-recipes/dp/178472517X
Probably verging on the “not simple” but her recipes are always very tasty in my experience, “Dinner” by Meera Sodha.
This is the way, though I marginally prefer her book "East". Loads of her stuff is on the Guardian website as well.
I would also conceded they are not super-simple, but I wouldn't call them hard, and most of them are quick. If you're going to try and go more plant based, you're probably going to have to make a bit more effort to keep it interesting.
Probably verging on the “not simple” but her recipes are always very tasty in my experience, “Dinner” by Meera Sodha.
responsible for a significant proportion of the dinners in our house.
this one is a firm favourite but fair warning its only good if you like garlic
I have gone for "Natural flavour - Craig & Shaun McAnuff " and "Yasmin Khan's 'Sabzi"
That should be enough to get me started.
Now what are the ingredients, not the main ones but the common extras I need to stock in my pantry? it looks like tahini is one.
I have but wouldn't bother recommending Bosh or Veg by Jamie Oliver. We had a Bosh! Quick book from the library that was much better than the original Bosh!
I'd recommend the Green Roasting Tin by Rukmini Iyer and East by Meera Sodha. Also a lot of the stuff she does for the Grauniad makes it in to one of her books sooner or later. GRT is mostly easy stuff, chuck it in a roasting tin and make a sauce. East is better but slightly more work.
Other books that get regular use in our kitchen include
Fresh India
Made in India (both by Meera Sodha)
Happy Vegan (Ferne Cotton)
Deliciously Ella
Well worth a look at your local library for a few as well.
p.s. That Lebanese Moussaka with garlic sauce is amazing. All the goodness without the faff of baking a moussaka. Plus garlic. Mmm
Another vote for Meera Sodha. We have 3 of her books, all great.
Not complicated and very few duff recipes.
Hairy Bikers
Delia Smith
+1 for the Rukmini Iyer thing. Lots of interesting ideas, mostly good, don't be scared of swapping/experimenting if you can't get exactly what the recipe calls for. I'm generally quite carnivorous but have enjoyed a lot of these.
Soph's Plant Kitchen - Sophie Waplington
It sort of depends how you define 'complicated'.
There are loads of cookbooks from all over the world where the normal diet is vegetarian, and the food is fantastic. That's great, but even I only eat curry once a week, and I really love curry. But it's easy to cook because 99% of the ingredients are familiar to you, you're just making a curry with paneer/chickpeas/lentils. The same recipe and techniques would have worked just as well with chicken, lamb or prawns.
There's load of celebrity chef stuff, like Jamie, and the Hairy Bikers which are frankly a bit nutritionally (protein) lacking and a lot of it is just side dishes scaled up to main portions. They're full of either carb heavy / fatty meals, or salads. There's very little in there you could eat every day and not become deficient in something. It's the kind of stuff people default to when they have to cook for a vegetarian at a dinner party. It's fine, it's tasty, but 90% of it is just a meaty meal with the meat left out, either that or it assumes vegans are all on a calorie restricted diet for some reason? No I don't just want air fried veg and veg lasagna made from sheets of leek!
Soph's book starts from the assumption you are a healthy person, going to the gym, running, etc and want 2500-3000 calories a day and you want new recipes that you could actually live off (pretty much everything has 30g+ of protein, loads of veg and plenty of carbs). The downside is, you will need a whole load of new ingredients in your store cupboard. There are recipes using multiple different types of tofu, nutritional yeasts, gluten free pasta, miso, liquid smoke, etc. So while none of the recipes are particularly complicated, it is a bit more of a commitment as you'll inevitably have to cook 2-3 recopies and puddings a week otherwise you're throwing away half a packet of everything. You kinda have to commit to making say a cheesy bean and pasta (with silken and yeast in the sauce) and then a cheesecake with the other half of the silken, and you've now got a kilo of yeast in the cupboard to use.
Modern vegan cooking is a whole way of cooking unto itself. Embrace it.
Although don't beat yourself up either. Cook your normal recipes and substitute cream and yogurt for silken, cheese for nutritional yeast, etc. Use Quorn "chicken" and a jar of dolmio when you CBA to make anything more complicated than arabiata. I went vegetarian about 6 years ago and frankly I cook even less than I sued to because my OH refuses to eat vegetarian food on some sort of toxic principle so half the time I now have to cook 2 meals every night (or she will literally eat boiled veg in gravy and claim I'm the one missing out ....... ) .
Most of the cookery books that are aimed at students are your best bet.
my OH refuses to eat vegetarian food on some sort of toxic principle so half the time I now have to cook 2 meals every night (or she will literally eat boiled veg in gravy
She won't eat vegetarian food and left to her own devices will cook wet vegetables? 🤷♂️ Let her?
If you like curry, google "british indian restaurant," there are a hundred recipes for 'gravy' which is your base for everything. Korma, Vindaloo, it's all basically oily stewed onions and a sniff of spices. Fill the freezer.
Now what are the ingredients, not the main ones but the common extras I need to stock in my pantry? it looks like tahini is one.
Crossed posts as i wrote the above over breakfast then went to work.
This is kinda my point, if you already eat middle eastern food then you'd already have tahini. So you're kind of making a mountain for yourself to climb by both adopting a whole new cuisine and making it plant based.
That said, a lot of vegan cooking does use miso, tahini, nutritional yeast, etc even outside of the regions that traditionally use them as otherwise lots of veg can just end up tasting a bit sweet.
As already said Prashad and The BBC. We also use quite few from Jamie Oliver.