East: 120 Easy and Delicious Asian-inspired Vegetarian and Vegan recipes

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To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. There are sweet potato momos for snacks and unexpected desserts like stem ginger chocolate truffles and matcha roll cake. Because of the ingredients, together with simple, straightforward and comprehensive instructions, you can’t really go wrong with these recipes.

Meera Sodha gives such precise and accurate instructions, which is very reassuring to less experienced cooks. Tuck that end of parchment over that edge of the cake and begin to loosely roll the sponge from one short end to the other, rolling the baking parchment with it. East is a fabulous cookbook and whilst it does contain some vegetarian recipes, most can be easily veganised – like using tofu instead of paneer for example. Once we finally ate it (a couple hours after making it), the vegetables lost their crunch, the garlic and onions were no longer crispy, and the salt brought out the juices of the vegetables.White miso ramen with tofu and asparagus: I was surprised that I didn’t like this as much as I expected. Here are surprising recipes for every day made using easy to find ingredients: mushroom and walnut samosas, oven-baked onion bhajis and beetroot and paneer kebabs. And then there are showstoppers such as daily dosas with coconut potatoes, roasted cauliflower korma, sticky mango paneer skewers, wild mushroom upma and lime pickle rice with roast squash and red onion.

Real Indian food is fresh, simple and packed with flavour and in this book, Meera Sodha introduces Britain to the food she grew up eating here every day. Whether vegan, veggie or simply an avid home cook, this exquisitely designed cookbook is full of simple recipes that will have every recipient swooning. There are familiar and classic Indian recipes like dals, curries and pickles, alongside less familiar ones using fresh seasonal British ingredients, like Brussels sprout thoran, Gardeners’ Question Time pilau and green beans with cashew nuts and coconut. I began by looking beyond India to east and south-east Asia, finding new ways to shift vegetables from the side to the centre of the table. I told myself to never borrow another cookbook from the library, because I read them, meticulously transcribe the recipes, and then never look at them again.

To serve, divide the wontons between the plates, drizzle some sauce over each portion, then scatter over some celery leaves.

The remaining recipes are vegan, with many of them based on Meera Sodha’s weekly column in The Guardian.Perfect for: Anyone who is a fan of Meera's two other books, Made in India and Fresh India, or who loves the variety of cuisines from across Asia. With straightforward instructions and easily available ingredients, this is the perfect cookbook for everyone, whether you’re an avid recipe follower, or a more adventurous cook! It's hard to pick a standout, but the sweet potato cakes with kimchi mayo (I made extra and put that stuff on so many things) and the Napa cabbage okonomiyaki were 2 that I had to turn around and make again within a few days. I had been soothed by my first congee in Hong Kong and had my taste buds electrified in London’s Chinatown by a bowl of dan dan noodles. Bring to the boil – but watch it doesn’t boil over – then turn the heat down to a whisper and cook for about 30 minutes, stirring fairly frequently to make sure the rice doesn’t stick and burn.

Whether you are vegetarian, want to eat more vegetables or just want to make great, modern Indian food, this is the book for you. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Carefully peel off the now top piece of baking paper and replace with a new sheet just slightly larger than the cake.

I’m a big fan of Meera Sodha’s column on the Guardian, the New Vegan, and considering this cookbook made it on a handful of Best Cookbooks of 2020, I was very excited.