Customer Reviews:
 Student Cookery MINUS the Crappy Student Cookery Image May 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I absolutely love this book - it really is the best veggie cookbook I've ever come across!
All too often the angle is that if you're veggie you must be a) doing it to be healthy (in which case the recipe book neglects the gloriously calorific, cheesy, doughy stuff in favour of stiff, crunchy vegetables) or b) doing it and having difficulty (in which case you basically get fifty recipes for Shepherd's Pie except with quorn mince substitute).
It's not the book for you if you want millions of mouthwatering pictures, it's very wordy indeed - but personally I like that, and the advice given is so good it's a sure compensation. The author possibly likes the sound of her own voice a bit, mixing in family anecdotes and jokes with the informal tone, but the result is that it's actually very friendly, personal and funny to read.
The recipes themselves are frankly gorgeous, and genuinely creative - cucumber stirfry, pink thai coconut rice, basque butterbean stew and parsee-style spinach and cumin eggs are easy, exotic, and impressive. The best thing about them is their flexibility - there's usually two or three bullet points after every recipe explaining that if you don't have x, y will do just as well, or you could toss in a handful of z if you had some kicking about! This sort of attitude is, of course, PERFECT for a haphazardly-stocked student kitchen.
She provides pretty basic sections on food hygiene and veggie nutrition, but again, her tone is so witty and opinionated that you never feel patronised (and, let's face it, there are a lot of clueless students who really do NEED a section on basic nutrition, judging by some of the stoned wrecks I met in student Halls of Residence!)
The main thing I love about this book is that Ms Beckett has gone out of her way to really explore the different tastes of the vegetables, rather than just lumping them all into one bland category. An entire section is devoted to systematically going through all the common and not-so-common ones, the ways of best cooking them to bring out their unique flavour and how NOT to cook them to mush.
Some of the ingredients are slightly beyond the average student budget, but the author has helped this by going out of her way to think of ways of making it go further, and compensating for the more expensive recipes with ones that are actually ten times cheaper than supermarket-bought versions of the same meal. For me, it's perfect, because hated the whole 'You are a student, therefore ALL your money must go on cheap booze and NOT GOOD FOOD!' image - I love my food and if it means I have to maybe sacrifice the odd night out so I can cook beautifully, great. This is definitely the book for you if you want to impress on a budget at dinner-gatherings and shake off the crappy student food image.
Overall, brilliant - give it as a present to any foodie friend, vegetarian or otherwise.
 Not particularly amazing December 27, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
If I am going to cook something, I want to know what it's going to look like before I do so. I want to be visually stimulated by the image of the food; words don't make people hungry as effectivly as images do. This book's lack of any pictures is probably its biggest weakness; without pictures, this book simply fails to get me excited about cooking the recipes within.
When writing a cookery book for students, you need to consider that many students have little space, few pans, and little money. Your recipes need to use cheap, long-lasting foods that are calorie-dense and thus take up little room. You also need to write recipes that don't take very long to cook, because less time cooking = more time studying/drinking/shagging. While most of the recipes are cheap and cheerful, some of the recipes in this book use ingredients that a student just isn't going to be able to shell out for or have time to cook.
Yum March 20, 2005
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
I have tried a number of vegetarian cookbooks, and this one is the easiest, yummiest and most down-to-earth. I keep coming back to it, and I still haven't tried everything. All the recipes are really simple, using everyday store-cupboard items. I've even learned how to make my own pasta sauces. The only downside I can think of is that it is split into sections for meals for one or four people which might suit some fine, but it means you have to do some maths when you just want to cook for yourself as most students do. Luckily the rest of my flatmates love this book too and I'm also going to get a copy of this book for my mum.
Very useful November 11, 2004
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book is great - I have tried loads of the recipes and they all work really well. The tone of the writing is also pretty good, and the recipes are easy to follow. Recommended!
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