The Modern Vegetarian

Maria Elia

Maria Elia's book is subtitled 'Food Adventures for the Contemporary Palate', and the author takes the view that 'the vegetables are the heroes'.  Her menus celebrate not just the varied flavours of different vegetarian ingredients, but also the colours and textures, which she combines in adventurous harmonies to create some very unusual and exciting recipes.

As it's written by an El Bulli - trained restaurant chef, many of the recipes can seem overly 'faffy' and presentation-led... whilst its hard to disagree that a wonderful meal should engage the visual senses, some of the suggestions seem to involve a degree of fuss and finesse that would be unusual for home cooking, tending towards the fashions of molecular gastronomy and doing things simply because you can... a dish entitled 'textures of peas' for example suggests presenting small amounts of 5 different pea recipes: savoury pea custard, chilled pea jelly, hot mint basil and pea soup,  and steamed pea shoots and pods.  To my mind this is overkill, and rather missing the point of the subtle flavour and fragrance of the freshest new peas - some things were best done more simply.

Lots of the recipes are just delicious and reliable though.  Her red lentil dhal, with fresh herbs and lemon, is sublime, and well worth doubling the quantities and making a huge pan of in one go.  Her braised mushrooms are also delicious, though I had to find a substitute for Shaoxing rice wine... almost all the fresh ingredients in the book can be found without difficulty on the costa blanca when in season, but some of the more exotic storecupboard items will be harder to track down.  Lots of different risotto restaurants - some of our local restaurants could do with exploring this section, just so they can offer us butternut squash, or radicchio and strawberry, instead of yet more mushrooms. 

She makes a lot of aubergine dishes as well, and again you can just pick out the bits you want rather than creating a full-on restaurant or dinner party confabulation (for example, adding grilled aubergine pulp to mashed potato is inspired, and goes with so many different things).  A delicious recipe for borlotti bean cassoulet is a winner in our house, it's always such a pleasure to find these in the market, and it's great to have a recipe that exploits the fresh bean so deliciously.  Vegan recipes are frequent, though not specially highlighted, and vegan alternatives (such as substituting tofu for cheese) are offered on some recipes.

Some of the flavour combinations are a trifle wacky for my taste, and the author does appear to have a slight obsession with watermelon, which makes an appearance in many savoury dishes.  To my mind this works well with salads and cheeses, but I have not yet been minded to attempt the watermelon curry.

The desserts section is very interesting and contains a really good variety of dishes, again using many of our delicious mediterranean ingredients and flavours (although believe me you can apparently do as many different things to coffee as to peas!)   Again many would take extensive preparation and planning, but to be able to offer lemongrass, ginger and limeleaf chocolate tart for pud would kind of make it all worthwhile, even if part of your afternoon had been spent piping melted white chocolate into the middle of lychees (I kid you not)

All in all this is a beautiful coffee-table book, and would make a lovely gift either for yourself or any foodie friend who loves to cook and make really special meals.  The photography is excellent, and the descriptions mouthwatering, as well as detailed enough to create these truly complicated dishes effectively without expert knowledge.  Fantastic for those evening when you have to impress sceptical omnivores!  Enjoy.