best vegetarian cookbook

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More Daily Veg: No fuss or frills, just great vegetarian food by Joe Woodhouse

In his dazzling new collection of recipes–a companion to the highly acclaimed Your Daily Veg–Joe Woodhouse takes his inspiration from countries as varied as Vietnam, Spain, Morocco and Greece, offering modern updates of traditional vegetarian dishes so they are healthier and more modern in their approach, as well as recipes with easy ways to approach sometimes less familiar but still straightforward dishes that always deliver on flavour and satisfaction.

Grouped together by ingredient, the recipes follow a simple format of short ingredients lists and easy-to-follow instructions for making the most delicious food that just happens to have no meat or fish in it.

About the Author

Joe Woodhouse has been vegetarian since the age of 10, teaching himself how to cook. He later trained as a chef and spent years working in kitchens such as Vanilla Black and the Towpath Café, as well as contributing to events with restaurants such as the Quality Chop house. Alongside being a chef, he is also a photographer, shooting with clients such as Soho Farmhouse, Belazu, Marmite, Asda, Hakkasan, and Coleman’s. He is lauded amongst colleagues–including Anna Jones and Nigella Lawson–for being the best vegetarian chef in the business. His work has featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Bon Appétit, Guardian, Observer, Metro, Evening Standard and Life & Thyme. (more…)

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls in Tomato Sauce

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls in Tomato Sauce excerpted from Veg-Table: Recipes, Techniques + Plant Science for Big Flavored, Vegetable-Focused Meals by Nik Sharma. © 2023. Published by Chronicle Books. Photographs © Nik Sharma.

Veg-Table: Recipes, Techniques, and Plant Science for Big-Flavored, Vegetable-Focused Meals by Nik Sharma

Nik Sharma, blogger at A Brown Table, Serious Eats columnist, and author of the bestselling cookbooks The Flavor Equation and Season, brings us his most cookable collection of recipes yet in Veg-Table.

Vegetable-focused recipes are organized into chapter by plant family, with storage, buying, and cooking methods for all. Here is a technique-focused repertoire for weeknight mains for cooks of all skill levels looking to add more delicious and satisfying vegetable dishes to their diet. Combining the scientific underpinnings of The Flavor Equation with the inviting and personal recipes of Season, this book features more than fifty vegetables, revealing their origins, biology, and unique characteristics and resulting in a recipe collection of flavours and techniques that are tried, true, and perfected by rigorous testing and a deep scientific lens.

Veg-Table includes Sharma’s first-ever pasta recipes published in a cookbook: Pasta with Broccoli Miso Sauce, Shallot and Spicy Mushroom Pasta, and more. And vegetable-focused doesn’t mean strictly vegetarian; bring plants and meat together with delicious recipes like Chicken Katsu with Poppy Seed Coleslaw. A wide variety of hot and cold soups, salads, sides, sauces, and rice-, egg-, and bean-based dishes round out this collection. (more…)

Crispy Smoked Tofu with Black Polish Sauce

Crispy Smoked Tofu with Black Polish Sauce excerpted from Polish’d: Modern Vegetarian Cooking from Global Poland © Michał Korkosz, 2023. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, The Experiment.

Polish’d: Modern Vegetarian Cooking from Global Poland by Michal Korkosz

Michał Korkosz’s first book, Fresh from Poland—a Booklist Top 10 Cookbook of 2020 hailed as “a vegetable wonderland” by The San Francisco Chronicle—brought a Polish vegetarian cookbook to American readers for the first time. Now, he moves from celebrating Poland’s history with vegetarian versions of traditional recipes to exploring Polish cooking’s rich present with 100 exciting recipes.

Polish’d includes both typical Polish favourites made vegetarian, like Kakory (Potato Empanadas) Filled with Roasted Vegetables and Cheese, and new flavours brought to Poland through immigration and cultural exchange, like Miso Żurek with Mashed Potatoes, Roasted Mushrooms, and Dill. Its recipes showcase fresh vegetables, grains, and herbs, but there’s also plenty of buttery, sugary, and cheesy comfort-food goodness to be found. Readers will see, and taste, Polish food in a new way as they enjoy dishes like:

Chilled Cucumber-Melon Soup with Goat Cheese, Crispy Apple, and Mint
Kopytka with Umami Sauce, Spinach, Hazelnuts, and Poppy Furikake
Nettle Pesto Pasta with Radishes and Asparagus
Grilled Broccoli with Lemon Mayo, Umami Bomb Sauce and Poppy Seeds
Tomatoes and Peaches with Soft Goat Cheese, Crispy Sage, and Superior Brown Butter Sauce
Carmelized Twaróg Basque Cheesecake

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Spicy Chilli French Bean Mapo Tofu

Spicy Chilli French Bean Mapo Tofu, Asian Green: Everyday plant-based recipes inspired by the East by Ching-He Huang. Photography by Tamin Jones.

Asian food has always included a variety of meat and dairy-free recipes. Focusing entirely on these plant-based dishes, Ching-He Huang draws inspiration from across Asia to create simple, everyday, healthy home cooking that features protein-rich ingredients such as tofu, seitan, pulses, beans and grains.

The inspiration behind the book is Ching’s husband, Jamie. From birth, he suffered from asthma and eczema but three and a half years ago, three months after adopting a vegan diet, he was cured. Ching has always believed in the age-old Chinese maxim that “food is medicine”, and having experienced first-hand the transformation of her husband’s health, she firmly believes in the healing power of plants to reduce inflammation, to restore, nourish and replenish.

This book is full of inspiring, quick and simple recipes, perfect for vegetarians, vegans and people looking to reduce the amount of meat in their diets.

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Cold Sour Tomato Soup

Cold Sour Tomato Soup excerpted from Fire, Smoke, Green by Martin Nordin.

In Fire Smoke Green by Martin Nordin Martin Nordin’s second book, he brings us a host of mouthwatering, modern vegetarian recipes, using the most elemental and ancient method of cooking: fire. Not just a barbecue cookbook, Fire, Smoke, Green is broken up into seven chapters that cover everything you need to know about making great food over the flame: from grilling directly onto fire, to cooking with indirect fire, smoked recipes, and even wood-fired pizza

Atmospheric photography and charming illustrations throughout bring you something other than your average vegetarian cookbook—as lovers of Martin’s first book Green Burgers will attest, his approach to meat-free cooking is anything but boring. Try the Roasted and smoked potatoes with beer-caramelized onions; the Fennel roots with shiitake, green onion, buckwheat and herb oil; or Harissa-marinated sweet potato with grilled cabbage leaves and black dukkah. Or if you still can’t get enough of the burger recipes, why not try the Zucchini and mungbean burgers with sriracha mayonnaise and furikake, washed down with a smoky Mezcal with grilled grapefruit. (more…)

Rosemary Butternut Squash Soup with Toasted-Hazelnut Milk

Eating whole foods can transform a diet, and mastering the art of cooking these foods can be easy with the proper techniques and strategies.

In 20 chapters, Amy Chaplin, former executive chef of New York’s renowned vegan restaurant Angelica Kitchen, shares ingenious recipes incorporating the foods that are key to a healthy diet: seeds and nuts, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and other plant-based foods. Chaplin offers her secrets for eating healthy every day: mastering some key recipes and reliable techniques and then varying the ingredients based on the occasion, the season, and what you’re craving. (more…)

Cherry Tomato Focaccia

Cherry Tomato Focaccia, The Veggie Cookbook by Camilla Stephens, Photography by Dan Jones

With bold flavour combinations and clever use of everyday ingredients, Camilla Stephens shows how to create exciting vegetarian dishes that will have even the most dedicated of meat-eaters calling for seconds.

The focus is on food for every day—whether that’s a comforting pie to plonk on the kitchen table after work and school or a lunchbox-friendly frittata. Alongside Higgidy classics such as Garden Pea and Potato Quiche and Squash Mac and Cheese Pie, you will find ingenious ideas such as a 10-minute Fridge to Frittata.

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