Helen Stanton of Forum Books in Corbridge, The Bound, Whitley Bay, and The Accidental Bookshop, Alnwick, reviews her latest food titles
Happy Vegan Food
Bettina Campolucci Bordi £15
This collection of easy and delicious plant-based recipes proves that nutritious food doesn’t have to be restrictive. With ideas for breakfast, lunch, dinner, meals for one, desserts and snacks, this is simple vegan food to pop a smile on your face!
Home Cooked: Recipes from the Farm
Kate Humble, £25, published February 3
This is a celebration of simple, seasonal home cooking full of flavour, comfort and joy. This is food to share, from breakfast to the evening, lazy days and busy weeknights, gatherings and everything in-between. We love the ham sandwich on beer bread with piccalilli, the spring chicken with wild garlic and new potatoes, and the tomatoes with steak and wild salsa verde.
Vegan Family Cookbook
Omari McQueen, £12.99
The brilliant young star of CBBC’s What’s Cooking, Omari? serves up easy, delicious vegan recipes for the whole family from a quick snack to planning a party. There are vegan sausage rolls, fried mac ‘n’ cheese, spicy nuggets, gooey marshmallow cookies and more. Lots of fun for the kids!
The Whole Vegetable
Sophie Gordon, £25
Here, more than 130 delicious planet-friendly recipes put vegetables at the centre of the table. Embracing often-discarded parts such as leaves, stalks, tops, flowers, seeds and peelings, this is cooking at its most sustainable. Use every part of every vegetable, reinvent your leftovers, and eat with the seasons with recipes from cauliflower carbonara, broccoli pesto and chunky pumpkin tacos, to apple and walnut Danish buns.
The Language of Food
Annabel Abbs, £14.99 published February 3
Full of wonderful ingredients, exciting possibilities and secrets, this tells the story of Eliza Acton, a poet who dreams of seeing her words in print. But when she takes her manuscript to a publisher, she’s told that ‘poetry is not the business of a lady’ and instead she is required to write a cookery book. Never having cooked before, she is determined to learn and to discover, if she can, the poetry in recipe writing. This broke the mould of traditional cookbooks and changed the course of cookery writing forever, proving that, ‘a recipe can be as beautiful as a poem’.
For more reviews from Helen, go to www.forumbooksshop.com
