Plenty

I bought this book in 2014 for my husband for Christmas and also have the kindle version of it too. It is a really great cookbook but some of the recipes look easy but they seem to have been made more complicated than they need to be. Yesterday I made the stuffed onions and honestly the length he goes to to create them is overkill. I simplified the steps and got a great result. I don't grate tomatoes and just used regular tinned chopped tomatoes and instead of using wine with the broth I used broth on its own. They came out perfect and everyone loved them. The sweet potato cakes were also easy and tasty but again I simplified them by putting the sweet potato in the oven and just scooping out the insides and mixing it with the suggested ingredients. He does tend to use castor sugar in most of the recipes but I just left it out and also lots of salt but I left that out too. The main ingredients in the majority of the recipes include fresh herbs, white cheeses such as feta or goats cheese as well as lemons or limes and yoghurt. I think this is an excellent book for quirky and unusual cooking ideas and I am happy with the choice of recipes. There really is something for everyone and lots of ideas that you can tweak to make them friendly to your taste. The black pepper tofu is amazing too. I use most of the recipes as side dishes rather than main meals as the portion sizes are quite small and seem to work well for us as side dishes to a main meal. For anyone who enjoys vegetarian cooking, this book is really wonderful. If you are not a vegetarian like me, then you will still find a lot of the recipes useful to go along side dishes. The index at the back of the book is very useful.

If you are a fan of Ottolenghi's weekly column 'The New Vegetarian' in the Guardian, then you may (like me) vaguely remember reading some of these recipes before. You may even have cooked a few, or (more often in my case) vowed to cook them at some point, possibly cutting the recipe out, or just throwing the magazine on the stack in the corner of your cluttered desk, or kitchen table, then tidied them away and allowed the Pear Crostini (Dec 2007), or the Puy Lentil Gallette (Jan 2007), or even (shame on you) the Scrambled Smoky Duck Eggs on Sourdough (June 2008) to drop off the wipe-clean tablecloth of your culinary agenda. Which is why this book is a dream-come-true: it is a cupped palm collecting all those crumbs (adding some previously unpublished ones for good measure) and repackaging them in a stunning, beautifully photographed hardback book. 'Plenty', indeed. I absolutely believe that this is the best book of vegetarian food I've ever read or cooked from. The reason for that is, I genuinely never once felt like I was reading or cooking from a vegetarian book. Some vegetarian cookbooks speak 'meat' as a kind of Derridean absent subtext almost as loudly as they speak vegetables; I'm thinking of recipes I remember reading in other books like 'vegetable toad in the hole'. In Ottolenghi's cookbook the absence of meat is silenced, easy-to-forget, totally squashed and rendered unimportant in culinary terms. Of course there is no meat or fish in the 'Artichoke Gratin' (p.178) or the 'Ultimate winter couscous' (p.262) or the 'Saffron tagliatelle with spiced butter' (p.260), 'Halloween Souffles' (p.64) or 'Egg spinach and pecorino pizza' (p.156) because these recipes are complete and perfect and authentic as they are, meat would be an unnecessary embellishment. It's wonderful to have Ottolenghi's New Vegetarian recipes collected in one place, organized by a central ingredient, so that if you fancy an inventive egg dish or a quirky but wholesome cereal recipe, you know exactly which chapter to consult. This is a great followup to The Ottloenghi Cookbook.

I’ve had Plenty for a while now, and it’s become one of my go-to cookbooks when I want to impress guests or shake up my weeknight meals. Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipes are packed with flavour, creativity, and a love for vegetables that even non-vegetarians (like me) can appreciate. 🍆 What I love: - The dishes are beautifully inventive, think roasted aubergine with saffron yogurt or lentils with grilled eggplant and pomegranate. - Ottolenghi’s Middle Eastern and Mediterranean influences shine through, making even humble ingredients feel special. - The book is gorgeous to flip through, and the writing is warm and inviting. It feels more like a celebration of food than a strict manual. 🔪 Why it’s four stars, not five: / Some recipes require a fair bit of prep or ingredients that aren’t always in my pantry. It’s not a “throw together in 20 minutes” kind of book. - A few dishes are better suited for weekends or special occasions, unless you’re the kind of person who keeps rose harissa and preserved lemons on hand. Overall, Plenty is a fantastic cookbook for anyone who wants to explore bold, vegetable-forward cooking. It’s not the most practical for everyday meals, but when you have the time, the results are absolutely worth it.

This is the second book by Yotam Ottolenghi I have. Just like in the first book, "Plenty" is filled with great recipies, nice photos and very clear step-by-step instructions. The recipies can be a bit unusual at the first sight: the combinations of ingredients are quite original and different from your average Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey or Donna Hay recipies. But that's what makes this book so excellent: fresh ideas and the combinations are clever and create a great taste sensation. Another thing I like about Yotam Ottolenghi recipies is that not only does the food taste and smell good, it also looks very nice with just a little bit of extra effort. So to sum it up: The recipies might look a bit difficult at the first sight but no woories, the instructions are that good that so far, there were no failures in our kitchen and it's well very much worth the effort!

After lusting over this book for years and cooking a number of recipes from it that I had found online, I finally caved in a bought it - and it's one of the best cookbook purchases I've ever made. The book itself is lovely, but it's what inside that really counts. I've been trying out multiple new recipes from it each week, and every single one has been a taste revelation. Not only is this food delicious, it is gorgeous on the plate. "Plenty" is an apt title; I'm not a vegetarian myself, but these dishes are so bountiful and compelling that you never miss the meat. I can't speak highly enough of Yotam Ottolenghi's food or this book. If you want to push your taste buds a bit and explore a new world of veggie sensations, snap up a copy of "Plenty". You won't regret it.

Over the last few years my family has started eating less meat and we all feel better for it. It's difficult to find decent (mainly) vegetarian books, most contain the ubiquitous stodgy lentil loaf and broccoli quiche and too much cheese! In contrast Ottolenghi's book has a much fresher approach. If you love herbs and zingy flavours that burst in your mouth, this is the recipe book to try. Everything I've cooked from it has been really tasty; at the weekend I made a 2 course meal for a vegetarian friend (no desserts in this book so we had ice cream after as our 3rd course) and she loved it. I agree with other reviewers that there are a lot of ingredients in the recipes and some are hard to come by, but most things are available in my local sainsbury's. The recipes also work if you substitute ingredients, e.g, one herb for another does change the taste slightly but results are still good, so don't be afraid to tweak things. Due to the number of ingredients it isn't an everyday book for those on a budget. I am trying to save money myself but I can still afford to cook at least one recipe a week from this and if you grow your own herbs you will save even more. Since I already had so many cook books I was wary of buying another one to sit on a shelf so I went to his website and tried some of the recipes from it first. I tried roast sweet potatoes with maple and pecans and I cooked mushrooms with cinnamon and they were both amazing! I was delighted when the book contained more of the same inventive ideas. The hardback (or is it softback?!) is unlike any other book I own, it's got a padded white cover which I think is nice; very tactile. It's quite large, roughly A4 in size. Pictures are lovely too, but there isn't one for every recipe so if you choose by photographs this may not be so useful to you. Overall I'm very pleased with it and I'm looking forward to trying more recipes. FYI, I'm quite an experienced cook, perhaps beginners would find it a bit fiddly to make some of the dishes?

This is my go to book for inspiration. Whenever I leaf through it I have an oooh or an ahhhh and seem to discover something new despite having flicked throu it so many times. The recipes are easy to follow. The ingredients are unusual but as I live in London, easy to source. You need to prep everything and then follow the recipe because often he uses a lot of ingredients. But once you get to know his style the recipes are easy to adapt. The hummus is a staple. We also love the burnt aubergine and the fried butter beans with sorrell. Often I substitute the herbs or spices and still get great results. Would thoroughly recommend this for an intro to the OttolenghinwY of cooking.

This is a beautiful looking book with great illustrations. The book is of really nice quality with a padded cover, feels nice to hold. I bought this book to give me inspiration as a relatively new vegetarian it can be difficult to keep things interesting and I tend to go for safe options. The recipes are very easy to follow and all seem to be pretty simple even for a rookie cook like myself. You might have to hunt around for some of the more exotic ingredients but most you can find in good supermarkets. I find it exciting to cook with ingredients I have never used before. This book has already made me more interested in cooking our meals so I can't recommend enough! Highly if you want to

Great book, filled with yummy recipes

Wer es nicht bereits geahnt hat, der weiss es spätestens nach Durchsicht dieses Kochbuchs und erstem Nachkochen von vorgeschlagenen Gerichten: Fleisch ist eigentlich überflüssig. Ich bin zwar kein Vegetarier, aber so richtig in Begeisterung versetzt mich ein Steak nun mal nicht. Anders ist es bei fast allen dieser Gerichte, die zeigen, wie viel sich mit guten Zutaten, vielfältigen Gewürzen und einer Portion Kreativität machen lässt: Sie können einen zum Schwelgen bringen. "Vibrant Recipes" trifft den Nagel auf den Kopf. Dazu die sehr schöne Darstellung und der erstaunlich niedrige Preis des Buches!

Interesting, creative vegetable recipes. I have made the carmelized garlic tart and the cauliflower salad with raisins and red onions. Both were superb. The recipes are fun to read and appeal to the mind of the tongue--one wants to make them all right away! I am not a vegetarian--thank goodness the author isn't either, so the book avoids any attempt at being weirdly "healthy"--so I paired the tart and the salad with fish dishes, which worked very nicely. A reviewer on the U.S. Amazon site recommended doubling the garlic and halving the cheese in the tart, and my answer to this was maybe, as the tart is rich, but it's really really good as it is. Another U.S. reviewer complained that the quantities in the recipes were sometimes off. I didn't find this in the recipes I made, but then I sort of fly free anyway, adjusting as I go to suit my palate at the moment, and the contents of the cupboard and the garden. I tend to use more herbs and hot pepper, perhaps, than many readers do. Still another reviewer objected because some ingredients were hard to find--I would just replace that ingredient with something having similar gastronomical qualities. Again...very creative book. The recipes are interesting combinations of hot with sweet, crunchy with soft, and application of herbs and spices to vegetables that I would never have thought of, being a California girl living in France and thus totally lacking a Middle Eastern sensibility. I can hardly wait for my summer vegetable garden to give me tomatoes and eggplants to use in these recipes! This is a book, I guess,for cooks that would call themselves experienced and adventuresome, and for people who like their food with a bit of a kick. It's not for those who want familiar comfort food and lack of spices, or for cooks who don't want to think too much about what they're making. I've now ordered the author's other book to try.

Great choice if you are looking for colourful, delicious vegetarian recipes with something different. Includes many tasty dishes suitable for vegans. Flavours are from well combined fresh herbs, spices and seasonings, not simply the all too common reliance on the addition of cheese or cream. Recipe ingredients, while not every day staples in the vegetarian/vegan cupboard, are easily found by exploring the rest of the spices shelf in your grocery store. Contents are laid out by specific vegetable which is particularly useful and the photos are especially tempting and helpful for presentation. Recipes are great for both "at home" meals, but definitely if you want to make a statement at dinner parties. Recipes can be used with confidence when entertaining either a veg or omnivorous group. One of the "better purchases" for sure!

Every dish I have made from this is a winner. It's definitely not just for vegetarians.