Recipe Challenge - Book #4

Tuesday, 2 June 2020

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I was pretty sure this book would be a keeper. After all it's a self declared essential vegetarian classic.  And although we only regularly use one recipe from it (Spinach Rice),  I always felt that its pages were packed with undiscovered deliciousness.

So it was a surprise that when we HAD to find something else in this book to make, everything savoury seemed a bit.. weird. Or maybe old fashioned. Or something.  The book was published in 1996 and the first 30 pages are devoted to explaining how to be vegetarian and what the food pyramid is.   Recipes that should have been delicious (like Thai Red Curry) were made a bit weird by containing ill fitting ingredients - like potatoes in the case of the red thai curry. Other recipes looked a bit odd from the get go -  for example Pumpkin with Chilli and Avocado. Others just looked incredibly boring such as Potato Gnocchi with Tomato Sauce. Yawn.

Jett was the designated chef for this book and he eventually chose Pasta with Sundried Tomato Pesto.  

It seemed weird that the recipe would include both cherry tomatoes and sundried tomatoes, and the pesto itself used a surprisingly small amount of basil so it wasn't all that strong.  And of course the addition of steamed asparagus at the end was certainly odd.  But all up it was quite tasty.

But overall this book is on very shaky ground.  In scouring the chapters for tempting recipes I did notice it had a much better dessert section than most vegetarian cookbooks (which are usually overly healthy and boring), but vegetarian desserts are really just desserts so it wasn't breaking new ground there*. It also has a dedicated mushroom section, which quite frankly is a big mark against it.

So I think it's going onto the maybe pile.  Maybe I'll keep it, maybe I won't. 

* Having said that I notice that MasterChef is featuring a challenge where the contestants had to make a dessert out of some form of meat.  **shudder**