Veggie cookbook recommendations for family food/simple meals for a beginner?

[gerbo]

I'm a mum of a hungry 16 year old boy who loves meat, and a 19 year old, who ests meat but she's at uni. My husband likes his meat too. I cook for the family every day from scratch, am a reasonably good cook.

I'm thinking of trying to cut out meat myself. It has been a while coming.

I could do with some simple family dinners to try out, I'm happy to eat veggie sausages etc sometimes but would like to up our intake of pulses/beans.

I've bever eaten or cooked tofu but it intrigues me, happy to try.

I thought I could gave a batch of lentil bolognese on the go, for example, as I cook a standard one amd freeze some of mine to use in future...

Has anyone else done this whilst cooking for their family?

Any cookbook recommendations gratefully received - good basic home cooking if possible.

Thanks in advance.

The Green Roasting Tin is great.

Thanks. We eat quite a lot of meat free meals already - halloumi fajitas, omeleytes, veggie curries or pastas, soups. I just need to ensure I get protein I suppose.

I'll look that one up.

*omelettes

I think it's out of print but the Cranks Recipe Book is excellent. I used it a lot when I was skint.

Try Jamie Oliver Veg? I’m an omnivore living with a pescatarian and eat like he does.

TBH I find most of my recipes online at BBC Good Food. It depends what you like - are you a mushroom fan? My son hates them so I am catching up on 20 years of never eating them. The Good Food simple mushroom curry is an absolute winner - for my cooking it’s actually relatively complex but it’s very good. I also make pasta puttanesca a lot, I make it with anchovy but you can do it without. Get used to softening/caramelising onions properly for a decent length of time, it makes a vast difference to flavour, so does using butter for frying, likewise do buy ALL the spices.

GRT has different sections for fast & slow recipes & they all basically come down to chucking stuff in a roasting tin & putting it in the oven for a while. I use it for batch cooking all the time.

Tofu generally has very little taste itself and needs stuff doing to it.

recipes that can easily be adapted or made with veggie/meat combinations

fajitas (selection of fillings)
three bean chillis (various recipes and can be done with jacket potatoes, bread etc)
shepherds pie with veggies and lentils/beans rather than meat
bolognaise with lentils

most Indian or Chinese food is easy to do with/without meat eg stir fry and do the chicken pieces separately if that’s the meat.

i love pad Thai with tofu - again you can fry chicken pieces separately to give a veggie/meat version.

Veg by Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall is good.

Meera Sodha’s East is one of my most used cookbooks, and probably one where I’ve cooked the most recipes from. It’s recipes inspired from across Asia. The vibe is weeknight meals which are fresh and delicious, and can mostly be made with ingredients found at an average supermarket. The recipes are generally simple and the instructions seem really well tested and I rarely run into problems with her recipes. I’ve had it nearly five years and it’s still my go to.

Other books I’ve got on with are One: Pot, Pan Planet by Anna Jones and Feel Good by Melissa Hemsley (not entirely veggie but it’s majority meat free and a staple for me) for interesting and varied veggie food.

Dr Alan Desmond’s Plant based Diet Revolution is a very attractive book with lots of photos and nutritional information. He’s an NHS gastroenterologist and firmly rooted in research. The recipes are easy to follow and taste good

Not just a Load of Lentils by Rose Elliot is a good basic book. Probably been out of print for years. Second hand copies easily available I think.

Amazing, some great ideas. Thanks.

Sadly my son dislikes mushrooms - I love them!