Product Description

All too often, the vegetarian option is an afterthought on a restaurant menu or the vegetables are relegated to a side dish at home. Here, for the first time, Simon Hopkinson focuses entirely on cooking mouth-watering recipes without meat or fish. Using fresh good-quality produce and combining appropriate ingredients in season are key to Simon Hopkinson's cooking. Invitingly, throughout the book, ingredients that go together are paired together: aubergine & pimento; tomatoes & olives; pappardelle & porcini, peaches & plums, for example. Vegetables feature strongly, of course, but there are also plenty of original ideas and gorgeous recipes for herbs, pasta, rice, pulses, eggs and dairy, fruit - and cocktails! Simplicity, practicality and sensitivity are the essence of Simon's cooking, and his recipes are a joy to make. But there is so much more to appreciate in this highly original book as the author's evocative writing brings his food to life on every page. Superbly photographed by Jason Lowe, The Vegetarian Option is not written exclusively for vegetarians, but as a fresh source of inspiration for all genuine food lovers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #877 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-16
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Review
"His last cookery book knocked Harry Potter off the top spot...now Simon Hopkinson has turned his attention from roast chicken to vegetables..... Absorbed, comforted, excited... Hopkinson delivers in his clear, unshowy, kindly prose." - The Times Magazine, 3rd October 2009 -- The Times Magazine, 3rd October 2009

"Packed with recipes for innovative vegetarian fare." - House & Garden October 2009
-- House & Garden October 2009

"A brilliant notion. It's vegetarian cooking but not in vegetarian spirit... these recipes work admirably without meat."
--Metro (London), 26th November 2009

About the Author
Simon Hopkinson's first book Roast Chicken and Other Stories was recently voted the Most Useful Cookery Book of All Time in a survey of food writers, chefs and restaurateurs in Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine. In 1978 he became the youngest chef to win an Egon Ronay star before moving to Hilaire on Old Brompton Road in London in 1983. His friendship with one particular customer, Terence Conran, finally led to the opening of Bibendum in 1987 where he worked as a chef until 1995 when he retired to concentrate on writing. His other bestselling books include Roast Chicken - Second Helpings, Gammon and Spinach, The Conran Cookbook and The Prawn Cocktail Years. Author Location: London

Customer Reviews

I wish restaurants would take note!
While waiting to receive this, I had a look at the reviews here for the author's previous book. Uh-oh. While generally positive, there was a lot of talk of obscure, expensive ingredients, and an inflexible approach. I hoped that The Vegetarian Option would not be like that.

Luckily, so far I have found it very usable! The recipes I have tried have, without exception, come out just as they ought to, and you can buy almost everything you really need at Tesco. It's not like the Nigella books where I find that recipes are often structured around one hard-to-find ingredient. My favourite success was the pilaf rice, made by a method so surprisingly simple and fairly fast that I wondered whther it would really work. It made me proud - fluffy and dry and fragrant! As a chef, he seems to be keen on simple but innovative methods - hence the inclusion of gnocchi alla Romana, a milk and semolina gnocchi bake recipe, different to the kind we usually see in recipe books (though a legit gnocchi recipe all the same).

I am also pleased to see that Simon Hopkinson includes recipes to make up your own store-cupboard base ingredients or condiments, such as green paste, garlic butter, ginger syrup, sesame paste, a garlic creme fraiche puree, a masala paste and a curry "essence"... Very handy - you can make up large quantities and keep them for another time. Many of them are used in more than one recipe in the book. Don't be put off by the idea of making everything from scratch, though - I left out the green paste for the pilaf rice and added cardamom instead; it was still delicious, just different.

In terms of influences, the recipes range from traditional English, French, Greek, Italian, Indian, Chinese, and many more, as well as comfort food like macaroni and cheese. Lots of variety rather than the endless combinations of mushrooms, goats' cheese and sundried tomatoes which have taken over the vegetarian option in restaurants everywhere. The book is laid out by groups of ingredients, with an overview and tips at the start of each section.

Simon Hopkinson is not a vegetarian himself and it's not a book of pale substitutes, either - I would recommend this book to people no matter whether they eat meat or not; if anything, it will be really useful if you have vegetarian guests and want to make something that everyone can gladly enjoy together.

First; catch your chicken...
There's something wrong with an author when he includes a recipe for chicken broth in a book called 'The Vegetarian Option' and then makes it sound so scrumptiously vile: "Put the wings or drumsticks into a large pan, bring to a simmer and skim off any resultant grey scum."

One presumes vegetarians should then chuck away the broth and drink the scum.

With the author's credibility dashed to the ground, or rather the bin, by page 13, vegetarians will be fearful to delve much further in case they are met by increasing carnage.

But there is little to fear, other than fear itself. Hopkinson's book is so boring you'll be asleep by page 20.

Chicken-botherer Hopkinson, who confesses in the book to being a committed carnivore, and knowing zip about vegetarian food, then goes on to write a book about it. The author can thus only have published this 'Vegetarian' tome to jump on some imaginary bandwagon, where vegetarians need to be treated as an unimaginative alien race, who live on nut cutlets, love being patronised, and finally, when the author runs out of ideas in the first twenty pages, told to eat chicken stock.

The author half-heartedly attempts to rescue later sections with a collection of dishes which verge on the tearful: 'Cauliflower cheese', (cheese-covered cauliflower), 'Boiled Onions with Poached Egg, and Lancashire Cheese', (boiled onion with a poached egg and cheese), and the final, dreadful act: 'Crisp Fried Shallots' (fry some shallots until crispy).

Hopkinson's 'Curry Essence'- fry an onion, add curry powder, tomato puree, and some jam, makes one wonder how he manages to find his way into the kitchen each morning, or more aptly, why this book costs £20.00. Dedicated veggies will find more variation and inspiration in a charity-shop Maguerite Patton cookbook from the Sixties, or, they could boil up this book with Hopkinson's Chicken stock, and bin the resulting grey scum. They'd have more fun.

Had Hopkinson followed this vegetarian's advice, and used any old Italian cookbook with mushrooms replacing the chicken, we'd all be dancing around tables groaning with fresh, bright Mediterranean salads, herb-some Minestrones, fresh yeasty onion Foccacia and red wine Cacciatore with wild forest mushrooms.

Instead, the poor reader gets little more than a me-too book of slow-witted English school dinners; grey, un-inspiring, and un-appetising.

Moreoever, Mr Hopkinson is punting the same un-inventive stuff to the broadsheets. Today's Daily Telegraph contains a recipe for; 'Macaroni Cheese'. What next? Simon Hopkinson's Pot Noodle Recipe? 'First, boil some water'.

There is little to save this book. The recipes are dull, uninvolving and un-inspriring. As is the cover. And the price. And the editing. There is scant mention of how Veggies will get their protein, as other reviewers have noted, and the inclusion of chicken stock an heresy, for which Hopkinson should spend eons in Poultry Purgatory, pecked to death by his victims.

An insipid, awful attempt, meant for Celeb followers. It should be on a lounge coffee table, not in a kitchen. Preferably, someone else's.

Uninspiring
I am a cookery book addict and love nothing more than poring through cookery books with a coffee and planning which ones I am going to make. Being vegetarian means that in a typical recipe book I have to disregard around half of the recipes. I just received "The Vegetarian Option" and settled down to drool over yummy recipes and have found myself sorely disappointed. Most of the recipes do not appeal to my tastes at all, Spinach Mousse, Beetroot Jelly with Horseradish Cream and Oriental Fried Turnip Paste, to name but a few. Some of the pictures of the finished dishes look like something I would send back if it was brought to me in a restaurant.

The only dishes that do look appetising are for bog standard meals like Macaroni Cheese and Cauliflower Cheese which I don't need a recipe for. I do like the way that the recipes are ordered by vegetable and can see this would be useful when trying to find something to do with stuff from the veg box. All in all, I would not recommend this book.