Product Description

VEG is an inspiring new collection of over 160 original and delicious vegetarian recipes, with the emphasis on fresh, seasonal, organic ingredients, carefully but simply prepared. It contains suggestions for snacks, treats and breakfasts, as well as more orthodox meals. It's a book for real people who want to eat real food not junk food, but have limited time available for cooking. With its comprehensive list of contents in which vegan and low fat recipes are highlighted, recipes can be located instantly -- great for speedy menu-planning.

Not just for confirmed vegetarians, VEG should also appeal to people seeking to reduce meat consumption and looking for interesting alternatives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #612783 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
A vegetarian for 20 years, Catherine Mason is also a keen gardener who grows many of her own vegetables, herbs and fruit. She prefers organic produce and is keen to promote its benefits, yet is not obsessed with a traditionally puritanical style of vegetarian cooking. Her recipes, garnered from a range of sources, including the recipe notebook she has kept since childhood, are redolent of the freshness of the kitchen garden, but she is not immune to the attractions of rich yet pure ingredients such as Dolcelatte cheese, butter and walnut oil, and neither does she deal in overcomplicated techniques that rely on a battery of expensive utensils. She wins the reader's confidence with her thorough explanation of how to roll sushi, including the observation that a clean napkin will do as well as a speciality bamboo rolling mat! For starters, she offers pureed broad beans with tarragon, lovage soup or mushroom and aubergine wontons; her main courses encompass saffron ravioli filled with a puree of petit pois, pattypan squash filled with Roquefort and walnuts and mushroom risotto with Marsala. She suggests a host of vegetable accompaniments and, although she professes not to be a great lover of desserts, provides recipes for such delights as brandy mocha trifle, vodka lemon sorbet and French chocolate cake with ground almonds. A purist when it comes to ingredients, Mason is open to the idea of labour-saving devices, particularly bread-making machines, and her chapter on baking, although brief, offers a particularly superb suggestion for saffron cardamom bread with dates and pecans. Only one complaint: no mouthwatering food pictures! (Kirkus UK)

Lindsey Bareham, London Evening Standard, 23 July 2001
There are lots of good ideas here... refreshingly straightforward.

From the Author
VEG began life as a hand-written notebook when I was eleven years old. It started as my school `Domestic Science' notebook, in which I dutifully recorded the rather dreary recipes drummed into us terrified girls by Attila the Cookery Teacher. Cookery for boys was unheard of at the time!

I knew that cooking could and should be fun from mammoth Saturday afternoon baking sessions at home with mum, during which we both regularly ended up giggling and covered in flour, so, as soon as I could, I ditched the Domestic Science lessons and was left with an almost empty notebook. Being a frugal Yorkshire lass I couldn't throw it away. What to do? I started transcribing recipes from magazines and library books -- anything that sounded interesting and delicious, with a preponderance of cakes and puddings, most of which I never made but just liked the sound of.

Time passed and the notebook accompanied me away to university, where I immediately became a `proper' vegetarian. I'd always been a most reluctant carnivore. I lived in a lively and chaotic shared house for a few years, with a diverse and transient population, where we always took it in turns to cook. This was where my culinary education really began... Hanging around watching other people cook, and cooking with them, glass of wine in hand, must surely be some of the best fun you can have while still clothed.

With a little experience and growing confidence, the recipes in the notebook gradually evolved into things which were more my own. I have a low culinary boredom threshold, so new ideas and recipes accumulated quite rapidly and I never could resist the temptation to tinker about with other people's ideas. Sometimes it worked better than others -- people might complain a little but it was never much of a big deal. Usually someone else had made something even more revolting the week before! Over time, it became easier to predict what would work.

After university I worked for a time in one of Britain's first wholefood coops, where I came across no end of wacky and esoteric ingredients. We stocked all kinds of Japanese and macrobiotic stuff, and a fantastic range of dried spices and herbs -- most of which I tried, in my quest to keep culinary tedium at bay. Some things languished in the cupboards, others became part of my stand't think anything is missing. It's for you to judge how far I've succeeded, but if you enjoy cooking and dining from `VEG' even a fraction as much as I enjoyed dreaming up the recipes, testing them and writing the book, then you're in for a good time.