I have read many arguments for eating less meat and more vegetables and I just can’t seem to get in the mood for it. It sounds so boring to be vegetarian like I would be subjected to the same boring dishes day in and day out. No variety and certainly no excitement. If a book could change my mind A Modern Way to Eat would be the book. I will kill the suspense and tell you it didn’t change my mind, and I served most of these dishes as sides, not the main course. This is the first vegetarian cookbook that had me thinking it might actually be more interesting, challenging and fun to cook without meat. I might even add in a few meatless Monday’s because of Anna Jones.
Her work as a food stylist, chef, and writer all shine in this book. The photos are beautiful and I found them to be particularly accurate to my finished dishes. There wasn’t a recipe I completed that had me wondering why my food didn’t look like the pretty pictures. Everything came out looking just as inviting and delicious as her food.
An important part of cookbooks for me are the conversation and storytelling given. The more the better. I think if I can read the cookbook like a book that is ideal. I enjoyed the stories of the food and her introduction fo the book. Though at points, it sounded like every other intro. Implications that eating unique vegetable and grains is cheaper and oh so popular these days. I am not sold on all of that. Meat is expensive, but so is stocking my pantry with a variety of grains and my fridge with unique veggies isn’t that much cheaper than a whole chicken, even an organic one. I will agree that vegetables and unique ingredients have gained a foothold, but it is hardly commonplace outside of the larger cities. The majority of the people where I live don’t eat like I do. There is a good section of us that do, but we aren’t the majority and some of those ingredients require 3 or 4 stops at different grocery stores before you can cook. She had me mesmerized with the pictures and her obvious love of sharing food with friends and family that I quickly got past that hangup and dove into making a list of recipes I wanted to try.
I know enough about cooking though and some of the harder to come by ingredients had obvious substitutions and still resulted in the most delicious veggie dishes. Because of the unique ingredients and the way the recipes are written I wouldn’t recommend this as a good book for a beginner. An understanding of cooking terms would be helpful. She doesn’t hand hold you the temperature of your stove. There are oven temps, but not many mention of putting the stove burner on medium-high or another temp. This might just be something standard in British recipes.
Sticky and Sweet Tomato Bake…
Pesto creator that gave me avocado cilantro pesto perfect for quesadillas…
Golden roasted root vegetables with leeks, lemon ricotta pancakes, and saffron spiked ratatouille. There were a few more on the list, but I haven’t gotten to cooking those yet. I loved every recipe that I made. The pancakes were divine. Light, fluffy and moist with a great citrus flavor. Mine was actually citrus instead of lemon because I misread the recipe twice and ran out of lemon zest before I got it right. I used orange and grapefruit zest instead and it was a perfect mistake.
The golden roasted root vegetable recipe has a citrus herb oil to drizzle on top that made these the most exciting roasted vegetables to come out of my oven, and that sticky and sweet tomato bake will be making an appearance next week as we start our Whole 30. As a matter of fact, a lot of these recipes will be making appearances as we venture into our second Whole 30.
For a book I wasn’t excited about it quickly became dog-eared and speckled splashes and spills that mark it as having the potential of becoming one of my go-to cookbooks all year-long.
I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review. All thoughts are my own and I received no other compensation.
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