Vegan food. No, don’t switch off because we’re not talking about nut cutlets here, even though the word vegan always suggests the promise of food even less interesting than vegetarian.

These recipes are in fact tempting and delicious; I can say this with confidence because I ate a lot of them at the recent book launch at tibits Regent Street.

The book is a collaboration between tibits the restaurant and Hiltl, the oldest vegetarian restaurant in the world. The Hiltls restaurant was founded by Ambrosius Hiltl who found that moving to a meat free diet helped him to recover from a life-threatening illness. Did it really? Who knows, but he was convinced enough to never go back to meat again.

Today Hiltl and tibits work together running restaurants around the world offering a daily changing menu of vegetarian and vegan dishes.  The range and variety show that avoiding meat needn’t be murder on the taste buds. They even serve alcohol, which shows that hair shirts don’t feature on the menu either.

The book has 80 recipes, none complicated and all achievable, from winners such as Parsnip Gnocchi, Courgette Schnitzel and Quinoa and Potato Burgers, to my personal post-tasting favourites the Indian Beetroot Fritters, Asian Glass Noodle salad and Lemongrass and squash salad and sesame seeds.

Starters, appetisers and soups, salads, hot dishes, desserts, breakfast and drinks are all listed by section and there is also a section on basics like Spatzle, mashed potatoes, vegan mayonnaise and a punchy tofu marinade. Pictures help demonstrate that none of these dishes are either brown or boring.

We could all do with missing meat at least one day a week, especially as the fashion right now seems to be to overdose on it as much as possible. This book is a breath of fresh air amidst the hamburger fumes.

{ISBN:1780262639}