The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook: More than 50 Recipes for Young Cooks
DK Publishing
January 2, 2020
Blurb: Full of tasty and filling recipes, this vegetarian cookbook offers up a range of 50+ dishes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack time. Budding young cooks will be excited by the variety of healthy vegetarian meals that are incredibly easy to make. Each recipe is carefully put together by an expert author and there is a nutritionist on board to check there’s a balance of vitamins, minerals, protein, and carbs throughout the book. Studies have shown that lowering your meat intake can be incredibly beneficial for you and your child’s health as well as helping the environment. Food fact files and helpful tips throughout the book give advice on how to achieve a balanced diet, ensuring every nutritional need is covered for growing young minds and bodies. The pre-teen and teenager categories are often forgotten, but this all-encompassing veggie cookbook fills that gap by suggesting foods that will help with concentration, developing hormones, and overall mental well-being.
The Vegetarian Cookbook published by DK publishing is a beautifully assembled cookbook geared toward young cooks, pre-teen and teen.
Like most vegetarian cookbooks, the recipes run through breakfast, snacks, drinks, lunch, main course, and dessert. Some of the recipes, however, struck me as questionable for young cooks either due to the techniques involved or the sophistication of the foods. For instance, I know very few adults who would happily eat a watermelon and feta salad with its other ingredients of basil, black-eyed peas, and red onion, and far fewer children who would do so. Likewise, I wondered about a cucumber cooler with tonic water for kids. Do they really drink these things?
Because the cookbook is British, it incorporates ingredients that many Americans tend not to use. Where a recipe calls for halloumi cheese, I might have been inclined to use baked or grilled tofu but on closer investigation, I discovered that halloumi is a fantastic source of protein! Mind you, since it’s cheese, it’s not vegan friendly.
If I were evaluating this cookbook just as a vegetarian cookbook, I would rate it much higher than as a cookbook geared toward young cooks. Most of the recipes sound tasty and utilize interesting and varied ingredients that would be nutritional and flavorful. I would happily cook most of them. The Vegetarian Cookbook would certainly be a way to introduce young cooks to cooking.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
My rating is an evaluation of The Vegetarian Cookbook as a general cookbook and not one directed toward young cooks.
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