Henry Firth

Some really nice-looking illustrations of tasty food, but when your recipe for vegan sausage, mash and gravy runs to three pages and has 34 ingredients (ok, that does include seasonings and water), you lose the right to describe this as "quick, simple meals". I will, however, make something from it when I'm on holiday, rather than when I've just got home from work.
(It's possible I'm just a lazy cook, though!)

This is a fun and gorgeous cookbook. My very favorite thing about it is for many recipes they’re customizable and they list many choices of ingredients in each category. So you can make one recipe many times and it can be different every time.

The cookbook authors have a video channel where you can watch them cook (two English guys) but I haven’t viewed any of their videos. They’re at: www.bosh.tv.

The guys seem personable, and confident and highly competent in the kitchen.

The photos show more of the finished recipes re mouthwatering and beautiful. They’re real artists.

There are two things that didn’t make this a favorite cookbook for me for very personal reasons and they’re common in many cookbooks I read. One is that all the basic recommended equipment listed that are good to have for preparing the recipes I don’t have and am unlikely to ever have. The other is that for most recipes I’d have to tweak them (which is actually okay because I never really use recipes as precisely as they are given) because I don’t like so many ingredients that others seem to like. Examples of ingredients that are included that I’d leave out or substitute are: vinegar, mustard, mayo, coconut, capers, jackfruit, sea vegetables, yogurt, and alcohol, though I sometimes am okay with wines as part of cooked dishes, and sundried tomatoes which I’ve only occasionally liked depending on how they’re used.

In addition to the several customizable recipes I also liked some of their (various international) menus, as they combine a few of their recipes to make a full meal/feast.

I had started to write down all the recipes I’d want to make/eat, both the ones I could make as is and the ones I would need to change a bit to my tastes, but I started listing so many I finally stopped. If I ever want to make anything from this book I’ll have to borrow it from the library again. But I will say their vegan chocolate cake might be the best I’ve seen, even better than the one I’ve made, adding more cocoa to the cake and the frosting, from Jennifer Raymond’s classic book, so I’d like to try it. Ditto the chocolate mousse using aquafaba. I buy a lot of canned beans and would really like to try using the aquafaba from them. Except for the cocktails section, there were multiple recipes in every section that I found highly appealing.

Contents:
Welcome
This book
Your kitchen
Fantastic feasts
01 QUICK EATS
02 BIG EATS
03 SHOWPIECES
04 GREENS & BOSH! BOWLS
05 SMALL PLATES & SHARERS
06 COCKTAILS
07 DESSERTS
09 BREAKFASTS
Nutrition
Thanks
Index

According to the cover, Henry Firth should have his name listed first and Ian Theasby’s name should be listed second, but I don’t have the time or patience right now to change the data in every edition listed here, so I’ll leave it be.

ETA: (I could add a LOT) is that one thing I did notice though, but only in a very few recipes, was that in the photo there was sometimes an ingredient (green peppers, for instance) that didn't appear in the printed recipe. show less

I picked this up on a whim from the library to learn more about veganism. It's informative, flexible, and not preachy, but didn't quite convince me to become a vegan. It did convince me to at least try to eat less meat though.

I thought this was a great introduction and explanation of veganism. It wasn’t preachy, a very positive and encouraging book about becoming vegan.