Recommend me a good vegetarian cookery book - all mine are from the 80s!

[Kathyis6incheshigh]

We have just got a vegetarian au pair but I stopped being vegetarian in 1995, so all my books are ancient. They are a mixture of the nice and the unbelievably tragic (one of them is called The Single Vegan and it keeps going on about something called autolysed yeast flakes ).

Since then I have become all foodie in a River Cottage farmers' market, Jamie Oliver faffing around with fresh coriander seeds and basil, Nigella poncing around delicatessens, sort of way.

Can anyone recommend me a new vegetarian cookery book that I'll really enjoy using please?

PMSL at the autolysed yeast flakes - I have that book and cooked a recipe from it last week. I bought some of the flakes (why?) and honestly, it was the most foul thing I have ever eaten. And I have eaten other recipes from that book

If you like fancy cooking you would probably like Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian - it is my favourite. Quite heavy on the Indian sub continent but still a good mix of flavours from the rest of the world. And plenty of poncey ingredients - but NO yeast flakes!

Thanks Provincial Lady - will go straight to Amazon to inspect it.

Hungary, and she's brought a load of spices with her

I like the look of the Madhur Jaffrey one. I have her Eastern Vegetarian one but I don't tend to use it much - sometimes you're not, well, in the mood for eastern, plus it tends to have quite a lot of ingredients that are hard to get IME.

The Rose Elliot ones are quite good ime, I tend to use the 30 minute one a lot.

Cafe Paradiso cookbooks - spectacularly lovely food.

I really like Rose Elliot, she did a cracker called "Vegetarian Express", really good, easy every day food. Also like delia's veggie cookbook, and this is also fantastic...

you don't need a vaggie cookbook, there are enough good meat + fish free recepies in the nice "proper" recipie books, (Moro, River Cafe, Delia, etc)

better to search out perfect recipies for things like falafel, glamorgon sausages, veggie boston baked beans, that you can add to your repetoire of basic suppers

I don't have Moro or River Cafe - have been through all my Jamies and Nigellas and River Cottages and not found that many really, which was what prompted the thread.

I have an old Rose Elliot - Not Just a Load of Old Lentils - which isn't very appealing though perhaps it's the lack of pictures. Are her recent ones any better?

I find Rose Elliot a bit old fashioned too. I prefer the Cranks ones - The Cranks Bible and Real Fast Food..and they are well photographed. I agree with you, there aren't many decent veggie recipes in Nigella or JO.

The World Vegetarian one is absolutely brilliant - no pictures though, unfortunately.

Rose Elliot's recent ones are actually quite modern, with some pretty nice recipes in and lovely pictures.

Leslie Waters has done two veggie ones with easy recipes relying on a few, quite strong tasting ingredients - dd made a sweet potato curry from one of them last week and it was delicious.

This is very helpful indeed, thank you all.

Am vegetarian, and have tried lots of books over the years. The only one I keep coming back to time and time again is Leith's Vegetarian Bible. Utterly fabulous, covers many different styles of cooking, and recipes are arranged by ingredients (so lots of pulse dishes together, then a bunch of potato ones, then rice ones etc). Handy when you've got a bunch of stuff in your fridge and you don't know how to put it all together. Plus it only requires "normal" ingredients (ie no yeast flakes, whatever they are)

if you cat me i have a few vegan and veggie i dont use.i think mostly indian but a few from the rest of the world.

I've been veggie for nearly 20 years and the best book by far IMO is Leith's Vegetarian Bible. Hundreds of recipes and nearly all of them have been great.

Rose elliot - def good every day food. Also get an Indian cookbook - not the Kormas and stuff but indian subcontinent food, mostly vegetarian. Hindus I think don't eat meat.

Would second the Leith's Vegetarian Bible. I also quite like Delia's Vegetarian Collection, some stuff is a bit dated, but there are some really good simple ideas for when you are in a hurry.

Kranks bible. really scrummy recipes in there...

The accidental vegetarian here is wonderful too.