This is not your basic vegetarian cookbook. For someone looking for plain veggie meals to subsitute meaty ones, this is probably not it. It would have been very easy to throw together the usual carb-and-cheese loaded recipes, the same lentil bolognese, that fill so many other books. I am so thankful it is not that book.
This book is CRAMMED with recipes - a breakfast, packed lunch, lunch, snack / side dish, dinner and dessert for every Monday of the year. Beautifully divided into season, so you have refreshing meals for summer and heartier fare for winter, they all look delicious. Finally I have found a cookbook that actually does inspiring things with a vegetarian diet - some of my favourite recipes so far:
Sweet potato gnocci with rocket pesto
Spring vegetable stew
Fibre breakfast muffins
Spinach tart
Double choc crackle cookies (so divine)
Sicilian caulifower pasta
Mexican cornbread
Quesadillas with avocado, soured cream and salsa
Aubergine parmagiana
Lentil stew with pan-fried halloumi and pomegranate
Paella verduras
warm halloumi, apple and radish salad
roasted butternut squash and marrow
Baba ganoush
aubergine, potato and pepper stew
lentil, chickpea, cheddar and onion burgers (BEST veggie burgers ever)
Vegetarian sheperd's pie (so much better than Delia's)
...I could go on.
The book is beautifully designed, admittedly because there are SO many recipes they are neatly laid out in a smallish font - but if you have problems reading them, you probably need to go see your optician. Pictures throughout are beautiful, and for what could easily have been a gimmicky celebrity-led book, the celebrity presence is incredibly low - no photos of Paul wielding a potato masher - the McCartney family instead letting the gorgeous food take centre stage. Truly wonderful.