Recipe books and resources: a review

This week I finally donated the last of my ‘carni’ cookery books. I used to have quite a large collection of cookery books covering all the usual modern favourites from Nigella to Delia plus a wide range of Jamie. But since we’ve adopted the vegan lifestyle these had less and less relevance to the type of food that we eat on a daily basis or want to eat. Everything had a non-vegan ingredient, even Hugh Fernley-W’s Vegetable Book had few recipes that were just that, vegetables. Once the recipe books had made their way to the charity shop, I didn’t really have any plans to replace them. In fact, back in 2016 I blogged about buying a new vegan cookery book; I don’t think that I’ve bought one since then.

Over the last three years or so I’ve continued with my hobby of building recipe scrapbooks. I’m now on book number seven – vegan cakes, of course. They’re a combination of recipes garnered from internet research, photos of my concoctions and my blog posts. Still holding to my ‘theory of four’ I wondered whether a new recipe book could offer more than surfing the web. However, after working virtually without a break since Christmas I felt that a small treat was in order, not of the chocolate variety. I just hope that I’ll find more than four recipes to adopt into our regular meal routine.

One of my favourite vegan bloggers is Vegan Richa. Most of my recent vegan cake recipes have been inspired by the reliable practical recipes found on her website. So, I decided it was time to pay something back for all these free resources and buy a copy of her latest book: Vegan Richa’s Everyday Kitchen. Wow! I was not disappointed. This is the first cookery book where I have wanted to cook every single recipe. Filled with exactly the type of food we like eating and all our favourite ingredients – chillies, peanut butter, lots of spices, coriander, limes, the list goes on. I started on the first page with a peanut butter sauce recipe that made enough for three different meals and plan to cook my way through to the end. It’s based on a great concept of ‘awesome sauces’ which can be adapted and used for a wide range of different recipes.

I was so impressed with this purchase that I immediately ordered the previous (and first) Vegan Richa recipe book: Vegan Richa’s Indian Kitchen. This is slightly more complicated than the Everyday recipes, with longer ingredient lists. I’ll have to stock up on a few more spices than even my fairly extensive collection, but it’s another cookery book offering inspiration from cover to cover. If you’re in the market for a new vegan cookery book, I can highly recommend both of these.

The internet still remains a great resource for finding vegan recipes. In addition to Vegan Richa, some of my favourite blogs and websites are Minimalist Baker, Connoisseurus Veg and Good Eatings. Many of these bloggers are based States-side and so the recipes come with cup measurements. Once you get the hang of cooking with cup-sizes I’m sure you’ll be converted. I actually prefer to use cup measures rather than weighing out ingredients, even when baking cakes. One of my favourite kitchen tools is a simple plastic tub marked up in incremental cup sizes – it actually came free with a bag of dog food – but I use it every day. If you prefer something even easier to use, you can find these Tala dry measuring jugs on Amazon.

Remember, too, that with liquid measurements a US fluid ounce is about 4% bigger (29.57ml) than a British Imperial fluid ounce (28.41ml). The same goes for US pints, so best stick to liquid measurements in millilitres (ml), which all the modern recipes I’ve come across do. The other adaptations you’ll need to make when following American recipes are to get your head around a slightly different vocabulary: cilantro (coriander), zucchini (courgettes), eggplant (aubergine), powdered sugar (icing sugar) are just a few and to check the oven temperatures as Americans tend to use farenheit rather than centigrade.