The British based book, The Seriously Good Veggie Student Cookbook, is an eclectic collection of vegetarian recipes that will probably be a surprise to the average American college student. Although the (unknown) author/s of the book claim they are cognizant of the time and budget constraints of students the recipes would not reflect this if prepared in the US. With that caveat in mind, the book has some outstanding features.
The book presents 80 recipes organized into five groups: Breakfast and Brunch, Lunch, Dinner, and Dessert. Each recipe has an introduction with tips on cooking ,storage, or serving, serving size, total preparation time, list of ingredients given in British and American units, step-by step instructions, and a full page, color photograph of the completed dish. Although the book primarily contains vegetarian recipes, sometimes suggestions for making them vegan are included.
The recipes are varied and explore many different culinary traditions from Costa Rican, Mexican and Italian to North African, Middle Eastern, and Asian. They range from banana and raisin pancakes and cheesy zucchinis gratin to nasi goreng (Indonesian fried rice) and vegan ragu. Yes, the food looks delicious but the ragu takes 1 hour 30 minutes to prepare, makes 6-8 servings , and includes 18 ingredients. This is not a budget and time friendly dish by the standards of typical American students. To be fair, most of the recipes serve 4, take about 30 minutes to prepare and involve 8-10 ingredients. Some of the ingredients would be difficult to find in most areas of the US but perhaps easy to find in England.
The Seriously Good Veggie Student Cookbook has a lot of very good recipes and I would recommend it to people looking to learn vegetarian cooking especially if they were interested in international dishes. The main problem is that the book was marketed to the wrong American audience and would do better with the title The Seriously Good Veggie Cookbook. Just dropping the word “student” out of the title would make all the difference in it’s marketing strategy.
To buy The Seriously Good Veggie Student Cookbook from Amazon.com, click here.