Book Review: Terre à Terre Vegetarian Cookbook

Although traditional in its format and design, Terre à Terre is a beautiful book. Hardback, glossy, and with gorgeous, seductive photography, this is food porn at its best and most drool-inducing.

Its lead author, Amanda Powley, is obviously passionate to the point of obsession about food, and her enthusiasm is so infectious that I genuinely found myself getting into an excited tizzy whilst reading.

To explain a bit of the book's back-story, Amanda and her co-author, Philip Taylor, jointly own and run Terre à Terre vegetarian restaurant in Brighton, an independent establishment known renowned far and wide for its high-quality food, local, organic ingredients, creativity and commitment.

So as you might expect, the recipes within are firmly in the dinner party dining faction. Perfect for when you want to dazzle friends and family with your culinary talents, but not so useful for when you're home alone, hungry, and in need of inspiration to resist the temptations of nearby takeaways or boring beans on toast.

For example, dish descriptions such as “warm wild garlic custards with samphire linseed salads and cheddar and mustard seed straws” might be a tad intimidating to eager amateurs. But, whilst the ingredients, assembly and presentation might look complicated and exotic, the instructions are simple and straightforward. So even complex, pretentious-sounding and fancy-looking meals can be easily cooked up once you stop being overwhelmed by the titles and descriptions and focus on the methods instead.

Overall, original, inventive recipes, beautifully-presented with easy-to follow-instructions. Just expect to be teased by dinner guests about whether or not you're warming up to compete on Come Dine With Me. It's £12.42, from Amazon.