The Complete Vegetable Cookbook: A Seasonal, Zero-waste Guide to Cooking with Vegetables

by James Strawbridge

A must-have guide for every cook on how to prepare, store, and cook fresh seasonal vegetables with confidence and keep waste to a minimum. From asparagus and artichoke to fennel and celeriac, James Strawbridge has your veg box covered!

Whether you are looking to include more veg in your diet, moving to a vegan or meat-free lifestyle, or looking for some flavour inspiration for your dishes, this is a vegetarian cookbook with a difference - giving you the confidence and knowledge to safely prepare and cook the edible parts of seasonal vegetables.

Covers more than 60 vegetables organised by seasonality.

Over 135 delicious vegetarian recipes for you to enjoy - including main meals, light lunches and sides.

Detailed information on plant varieties with annotated photographs displaying the edible parts of each vegetable:
Learn the best way to prepare, store, and preserve your favourite veg;
Handy zero-waste top tips and practical tricks throughout to make your vegetables last longer;
Sustainable leftover solutions from stocks, and drying techniques to pickling, fermenting, and roasting.

James Strawbridge showcases more than 60 vegetables, season by season, exploring each plant's unique characteristics, different varieties, and how best to prepare produce in your kitchen. An advocate of zero-waste cooking, James also shares how you can make use of all that's edible from root to bloom with ideas on preserving and storing.

Rustle up one of James' family favourites - a warming fennel gratin for a cosy autumn evening meal; watercress, pear, and walnut tart; or even cucumber peel gin, and discover how the humble vegetable can deliver utmost flavour all year round.

A refreshing take on the classic recipe book,'The Complete Vegetable Cookbook' is a staple in the kitchen or a fantastic gift for food lovers and allotment growers alike!

Complete the Series.

Discover more from James Strawbridge in 'The Artisan Kitchen: The science, practice and possibilities' providing modern twists to age-old preservation, fermentation and cooking techniques. Or, why not join Dick Strawbridge, of Channel 4's 'Escape to the Chateau', and his son James on a journey to reduce your carbon footprint in 'Practical Self-sufficiency: The complete guide to sustainable living today'.

Genres: Cookbooks, Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published October 14, 2021

Reviews

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is quite a big book, over 300 pages and there's lots to look at. This is an ideal book for someone who wants to start growing their own vegetables or someone who wants to eat more vegetables and needs to find new things to do with them. Having been an avid vegetable grower for many years this probably isn't one I'd buy new (my copy is from the library), as there was nothing that struck me as something completely new to me but if I came across this second hand I would probably get it to flick through for a reminder when faced with a glut of something. This book doesn't have growing times which I think would have been a nice addition but perhaps then it would have made it too specific to the UK. Some recipes used cheese or eggs but the main focus was the vegetable so there was plenty in here for any diet.

There's some nice photography of vegetables and plants, I can imagine reading this in the early months of the year would really get me excited about starting the new growing year!

[Ditte · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/3 stars
I like the idea of this book: seasonal cooking where you use all of the edible parts.
Most of the recipes I've seen before (I don't need another pumpkin soup).
Zero waste-cooking should also showcase the mentioned parts of the veggies/fruits in the recipes, ex: in the chapter about broad beans the author writes that you can eat the tops and flowers!
I love this and hoped that the following recipes would have these parts of the broad beans in them, but no. Only the beans.
Then why write this?

[Caroline McGrath · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is brilliant - I LOVED it! Both inspirational and accessible, I pretty much want to cook / bake / ferment / bbq everything in here. We already eat loads of vegetarian based food at home and this book will help us continue our journey to eat sustainably and ethically - while creating utterly delicious meals at the same time. Bravo!

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Complete" is a bold claim, and one that isn't backed up by the amount of content, either the number of different types of vegetable or the depth in which they're covered. The content is fine, but I didn't gain a lot from it.