Customer Reviews

Simple vegetarian cookery with plenty of hints on getting the most from your vegetables! - By: The Village Green Preservation Society, 15 Oct 2008
The precis of this book is very good & an accurate description of the book. Looking through it I can almost hear Carol's distinctive accent from Gardeners World reading it to me.

Carol starts off with providing some general guidance on growing - enriching the soil, companion planting etc. This isn't thorough advice - & of course, there is her other book which takes you through the entire growing process.

Vegetables are dealt with by season - even if you don't grow them, by doing this Carol lets you know what isin season when. For each vegetable she includes (limited) details on how to grow it, how to store it, how to prepare it, how to harvest it, the main cooking technique & other cooking methods & uses. Where possible she'll also give hints on eating other parts of the plant (eating sprouting broccoli when it's the size of cress, pea pods). She then gives a couple of recipes for each vegetable.

For the size of book, I was expecting more recipes. But the book has turned out better for not being crammed with them. I've learnt far more about the vegetables I'm eating from Carol's writing, and, as with her other book, I feel even more inspired to get growing. In addition -in case it isn't obvious - this is a vegetarian cookbook.

I can't say that I'm wild about all the recipes - some of them don't seem particulaly inspired: the two asaparagus recipes are steam-boiled asparagus & barbecued asaragus (the first includes salt as well as asparagus & suggests the addition of a dressing (she does include some recipes laterin the book), the second is just asparagus). I can partially understand this - you let the flavours sing for themselves. I'd have liked to see a couple of proper recipes for each item though, with the basic, plain cooking of the vegetable as an extra. The recipes appear simple & those that I have tried are delicious.

Recipes include (I have intentionally avoided the 'steamed spinach', 'roast potato' & 'steamed broccoli' type recipes - rest assured that they are there though!):

Globe artichoke buds with garlic & lemon
Stuffed nicoise globe artichokes
Courgettes with pine nuts, onions & raisins
New potato spring stew
Caramelized onion jam
Garlic soup
Green gazpacho
Harissa paste
Roast pumpkin gratin
Squash & lentil tagine
Turnipsin garlic sauce
Brussel sprouts salad

Riverford Farm Cook Book: Tales from the Fields, Recipes from the Kitchen does contain some meat recipes, but it is also a very good example of the more adventurous things you can do with vegetables!