Vegetables & Vegetarian

<p>Vegetables &amp; Vegetarian starts with the vegetable as the main ingredient, which is not the same thing as a vegetarian diet.</p> <p>The distinction matters. Yotam Ottolenghi, who is not himself a vegetarian, wrote Plenty in 2010 out of his column in The Guardian and turned vegetable dishes into main courses through technique rather than conviction, using hard roasting, acidity, plenty of herbs, nuts and proper seasoning.</p> <p>Joshua McFadden's Six Seasons goes even deeper into the ingredient, organising the book by vegetable and by where it sits in the season, because an early, tender courgette and a late, overripe one require completely different treatment. It is one of the few books to take that distinction seriously.</p> <p>Deborah Madison laid the foundations back in 1997 with what remains the broadest vegetarian reference work in English, while Jeremy Fox represents the restaurant kitchen, where a vegetable is treated with the same precision as a fillet of fish.</p> <p>The section also covers vegan cooking, pulses, root vegetables, mushrooms and the growing literature on cooking more plant based food without framing it as deprivation.</p>