About book Veg! Het River Cottage Kookboek Met Groenten In De Hoofdrol (2012)
I liked the description of the attitude about eating vegetables on their own terms. Often at home we will have meals with no meat. It's not about eating less meat but really eating good veggies when they are available. Hugh is known for his meat eating ethos but he describes it very well in that in valuing animals highly will generally mean eating less. I am a firm believer that every meat eater should know where their meat comes from. It is a necessary thing to see a pig or a cow on a hanger. There has to be a visceral connection made between a being that was once alive and now is dead. That experience will make you think about your habits every now and again unless you really like the killing part. But then, we have different problems.Strange. Talking about vegetables, I have fallen into the trap of contrasting it against meat. It's just that vegetarianism and veganism have become these loaded terms depending on what side of the fence you are on. It seems that sometimes, if you are a meat eater, but really like vegetables, there is an expectation of 2 veg + 1 meat meals. It doesn't have to be. This is where this book comes in.It is an approachable book for carnivores by a noted carnivore on vegetables without too much of the stigma that goes with vegetarian cookbooks. If my shelves didn't already have a bunch of vegetable cookbooks, this one would make a good companion to his books and a good primer for enjoying the other half of the plate. About a month ago, I was having one of those days. I’d been booked for a job but my client was late delivering their material. I’d run out of coffee so I had to have tea for breakfast. Without my booked job to fill up my day I tried to do my own research but the words weren't flowing and the postmodernists were giving me the shits with their unnecessarily dense language (I do love a bit of pomo but it's so frigging hard to read sometimes). After an afternoon of unproductively staring at my computer my inner teenager emerged and I flopped on the couch, eating peanut butter from the jar and listlessly flipped through the channels, moaning at each progressively unappealing televisual choice (of course I had watched all of the DVDs I had and, although I had new ones waiting at the library to be picked up, didn't go because I was waiting for the job to arrive. Of course.) before settling the least boring of all of the boring choices, a show about cooking vegetables.However, I was pleasantly surprised. The show was the River Cottage Veg Everyday and it featured an appealing foppish gardening nerd enthusing about vegetables and his produce and cooking in an old-fashioned stove. It was really appealing! So, after eating Chinese takeaway (which was average, of course), I ordered the book that accompanies the TV series from the library and went to bed. This book is really good! Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is not a vegetarian but thinks we eat too much meat. For him, meat should be a garnish or a side dish rather than the main event. He states:Call me power-crazed, but I'm trying to change your life here. The object of the exercise is to persuade you to eat more vegetables. Many more vegetables. And I hope to do so not by shouting from a soapbox, but through sheer temptation.And the recipes are tempting. There's a huge range of dishes here including salads, comfort foods, tapas dishes and storecupboard suppers. I was even inspired to buy asparagus, which is not something I would normally do. I made the veggie stock and am trying the asparagus risotto with chili oil tomorrow.The best thing I have made from the book so far, however, is the refried bean foldover. The topping is the refried beans, which is fine - cheap and easy and pretty tasty with the addition of fresh coriander and ground cumin. The flat breads, though, were a complete revelation. They were delicious! The dough uses a recipe that can also be topped and baked for pizzas but is rolled as thin as you can get it and then cooked in a very hot dry pan for about two minutes a side. My boyfriend didn't witness me make them and thought I'd bought them, which is a huge compliment given that my bread is usually a distant second to good store-bought bread. I can see the flatbread becoming a regular part of my everyday dinner rotation.I give this book four stars and is one of the few books that I simply must buy for myself after borrowing the library.
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Good collection of vegetarian recipes with a British perspective.
—dlkira
