The Vegetarian Flavor Bible : The Essential Guide

If you love composing your own recipes, this book is a huge inspiration on how to match ingredients and find new combinations. You will not find any traditional recipes in the book, but advices on how to match your ingredients. The intro is also a good read, but not the important part. Whenever the season for a vegetable starts, I scan the matching ingredients, gets inspiration and starts to plan recipies.

Questa enciclopedia dei sapori vegetariani è un must have per chi, come me, non sa cucinare ma vuole imparare ad abbinare bene i sapori. Sono vegana da poco più di un anno e voglio imparare a cucinare come si deve, perciò ho acquistato questo libro per trovare una fonte di ispirazione. Sono a dir poco soddisfatta! Oltre ai suggerimenti per accostare bene i sapori dei cibi, ci sono anche spiegazioni dettagliate dal punto di vista nutrizionale. Consigliatissimo anche per un regalo a un amico o un familiare vegetariano o vegano!

This is a great book. It is, however, not a recipe book and was not designed to be one. The author's goal is to provide information on individual ingredients, including both useful tips (e.g., the two different flavor profiles dulse can develop based on whether it is sauteed or simmered) and flavor pairings for each particular ingredient recommended by at least one consulted chef. This allows you to start with your ingredients of choice, select the pairings until you arrive at a combination that you've never tried before, and obtain a result that's very likely to be good or maybe even great (provided that you already have the general knowledge/skill/experience to determine which proportions and cooking techniques to use). From there, you can continue to refine your result and develop it further if you're dissatisfied with the first iteration. I think that I have fairly good experience and intuition when it comes to creating new recipes/flavor pairings, and I have successfully done so in the past and was complimented by different people who tried my inventions. I have also ruined many ingredients in the process and discovered some very subpar pairings. To a certain extent, this is inevitable and should be treated or even celebrated as a learning experience; but being able to hear the advice of experienced professionals is always a boon, and this book is, essentially, a book of advice from people who have experimented with flavor pairings for years.

This book is essential for any vegetarian cook, or any omnivore who wants more information on creating veggie-friendly flavour combinations. My daughter and I, both keen vegetarian cooks, got this excellent book for Christmas, and we refer to it constantly. It does not have recipes, but instead is set up in encyclopedia format, with a huge variety of vegetarian ingredients given separate entries, with each entry listing information about that food, best flavour combinations and sometimes an interesting anecdote about its use and history. The book is intelligently laid out to allow the user to easily access the wealth of information within, and it is enhanced by beautiful photographs by the author's husband. This book has quickly earned its place on my "most valuable food books" shelf beside the iconic Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison.

This is great if you want to get ideas about flavour combinations because it has thousands of them. I love having it to look at for ideas. It doesn't have recipes. It's a bit pricey though so make sure it's really worth it to you.