Simon Rimmer, The Accidental Vegetarian
This book promised some yummy sounding food, N got particularly excited by it, because none of it sounded too much like vegetarian food. As a result I tried recipes from it with a great deal of enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, I have had a few problems.
Firstly: The instructions are not especially helpful, it lacks details where details would be really helpful. And when I say "lack of detail" I may be seeking a more charitable way of saying, "gets stuff wrong" or "misses stuff out". Example: I made some onion gravy to the letter of the recipe, but had to fiddle with it a lot to make it edible (i.e. something one pours rather than slices - this coming from someone who likes thick gravy)
Secondly: A lot of the recipes require you to deep fry, and even where it says one can shallow fry, you would need to be a better man than me to get a satisfying result. (As opposed to an oily mess) Generally speaking shallow frying is rarely a good replacement for deep frying, as I haven't got a deep fat fryer that closes a lot of doors to me.
Thirdly: One can kind of tell it is a restaurant cookbook, there is a feel to a lot of the recipes that they would be quite practical if you had a restaurant kitchen, but someone with a small range of high quality domestic apparatus might struggle a little. So for instance I have had to discount most of the recipes that require a deep fat fryer, the recipes are not designed to be easily scalable, and even simple dishes have relatively complex recipes.
Finally: The dishes themselves sometimes tended towards a trap all too common with vegetarian food, especially as found in restaurants. Chefs seems to panic, and worry that vegetarian food is too boring, sometimes they are right to do so, but that does not mean one needs to layer flavour upon flavour. A good meal should have three or four good flavours, no more than two very rich ones, with a couple of more subtle background notes. So pasta, with a rich tomato sauce, basil and cheese is, from a flavour perspective, perfect. Something swimming in a rainbow of Jus is not.
Delia Smith Vegetarian Collection
This I have had for some time, and shows the first sign of a good cookbook, that is that I have adopted some of the recipes and techniques into my general reptoire.2
Of course this was written before Delias current slutish phase,3 and shares the problem common to many of her books, that of excessive complexity, priggish obsessiveness and a peculiar aversion to microwaves and tinned tomatoes.(Amongst other things...) These are obstacles I have learned to live with, it helps to know that if one can be bothered to follow Delia step by step one will cook excellent food, in many cases a definitive version of a dish: to the degree that a vegetarian can cook an excellent Christmas turkey. Delia also makes her explanations clear precises and easy to follow, making her dishes and techniques very easy to adapt, perhaps Delia is best used by the more confident cook who is comfortable with riffing with her.
Worthy of note here is the tenor of the dishes, which are without exception dishes I would be proud to serve to my parents. None are really comfort dishes, to be eaten in grubby jumpers in front of the TV. All are dishes for proper meals, which might be eaten at table.
The Rest
The rest can be dismissed fairly quickly, or at least, they shall be here. Rose Elliot provides lentilly eighties fare in Gourmet Vegetarian Coking. The 30 minute Vegetarian contains simpler dishes than I would follow a recipe for, but there are some excellent, very appetizing ideas in it; slightly better, and aimed at the same market is Ursula Ferrigino's Real Fast Vegetarian Food. The New Students Vegetarian Cookbook is merely a curiosity, to be disregarded by anyone who does not find them selves wanting a recipe for a sandwich, - if that judgment is a little harsh I should mention that it does contain some useful advice for the absolute beginner, some basic versions of student standbys, and some excellent money saving tips.
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1 Thank you Sister for getting me these, I suspect they came from the excellent "Everything But the Cook" on North Parade, Bradford. I searched for an image, but alas could not find one, but have learnt that there is a lot of Coca-Cola merchandise out there.
2 Her Italian Stuffed Aubergines make an impressive starter, or a good main (with some potatoes or similar).
I have also taken the trouble to roast all the ingredients for the odd tomato soup, or sauce, and met with considerable success in doing so, after following her recipe for a Tomato Soup
3 In the Katherine Whitehorn sense of a slattern, of course. Whitehorn's 1963 article(alas not available on the Observer archives), caused quite a stir when she tried to reclaim the word in a more positive sense, in the same way that Delia tried to reclaim "cheating". Time magazine provides more here, and I was pleased to see that another has drawn the Whitehorn-Smith line on the related issue of frugality here.
