Dinner: 120 Vegan and Vegetarian Recipes
Meera Sodha, Fig Tree
Relief was the first emotion I felt on opening this book. Greed was the second. Dinner – Meera Sodha’s fourth recipe collection – opts out of the stress of hosting, focusing instead on the satisfaction of making one easy but delicious vegan or vegetarian dish for your evening meal. Finding herself in a state of overwhelm, Sodha realised she needed to scale down her idea of what cooking should be. The result is a joyous rundown of mostly one-pot or one-tray dinners, many of them Asian. It would make a great present for everyone from students finding their bearings to busy people wanting to eat more exciting midweek meals. Sodha’s recipes have a rare kind of magic: she somehow manages to conjure deliciousness without resorting to long ingredient lists or fancy techniques. The butter paneer cooked in the oven is already on permanent rotation in my house.
Flavorama: A Guide to Unlocking the Art and Science of Flavor
Arielle Johnson, Harvest
This is not so much a cookbook – although it does contain nearly a hundred recipes – as the book you need to make sense of everything you cook. American flavour scientist Arielle Johnson – who has worked with top chefs, notably René Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen – has written the definitive primer on the science of taste and smell. If you want to know why a raspberry tastes of raspberry, what chemistry tells us about how to combine spices, or ways to use heat to create flavour, Johnson has all the answers. Her knowledge is prodigious but she wears it lightly and writes with such an infectious curiosity that the information slips down as easily as a glass of her panela-coconut iced coffee. If you loved The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit or On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, this is one for you. Complete with delightful illustrations drawn by the author herself.
