The Vegetarian Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity with Vegetables, Fruits, Grains, Legumes, Nuts, Seeds, and More, Based on the Wisdom of Leading American Chefs

Ever come home from the Farmers Market with a basket of vegetables, some of which you may never have tried and multiple herbs or opened up the refrigerator to find various seemingly unrelated vegetables and have no idea how to put together a meal? This book is liberating! Gone is the sinking feeling of being stuck because you don’t have every specific item listed in a recipe. With this book you can instead find ways to make magic out of the foods that you have and put an end to feeling recipe bound. You can open up a page for an ingredient and see all the other foods that it mixes well with and even find favored flavor pairings. Then you can cross reference the ingredient to others you have on hand as well. But note that this is NOT a recipe book but instead a resource for flavor combinations. This book is encyclopedic and comprehensive and has made my time in the kitchen not only easier but also much more enjoyable and opened up the world of cooking for me.

This is one of my favorite books - cookbook or other. The concept of a flavor bible is fantastic for those of us that follow recipes lightly and make lots of substitutes. So easy to create flavorful meals based on what is available in kitchen or garden. Have a bunch of kale? Kale reference shows the flavorings that go best with kale and are scaled by significance with bold and capital letters (like garlic, sea salt, green onions, dried cranberries, and lemon). So many top chef curated dish combinations listed too. Honestly, this has transformed my cooking to a whole new level - even though I'm a home cook with limited time and resources. This is a fantastic cooking reference, but the best part is the beginning part of the book where the author explains her journey of interest in vegetarian foods. If that's not encouragement enough, she highlights the professional interest in vegetarian cuisine by top chefs in the field. Personally, I adopted vegan diet last year for health reasons. Switching to a new way of eating and cooking while keeping great flavors was very difficult. Vegetarian Food Bible was a great guide in the wilderness of new foods. I no longer feel like a food weirdo after reading of so many highly regarded food professionals switching to plant based preferences. I was so mesmerized by this book when I first got it. After poring through it for months, I still am. 5 stars is not enough for the Vegetarian Flavor Bible. I highly recommend it.

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.

As a fanatic foodie, this and The Flavor Bible are my go to books for trying to come up with new recipes. I absolutely love it, and reference it practically daily.

I've really only taken a star off because it took ages for the book to be delivered, and when it was delivered the book was damaged and I had to return it. However, the new one came within a few days and was in perfect condition. I think this is an amazing reference guide to mixing and matching ingredients. There aren't really any recipes in it, just ideas for them, so I would recommend this book to people who already know their way around the kitchen and like looking for inspiration.

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 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.

I would like to return it but it is such a heavy book it is not worth the cost.