Book Review - The Vegeterranean

I like to get treats and this weekend Mr. Stripey Cat brought me a copy of The Vegeterranean, Italian vegetarian cooking from the Country House Montali by Malu Simoes and Alberto Musacchio.

It's a bold step to open a purely vegetarian restaurant in Italy, a wonderful country which was in our researches as a possible place to relocate to but where a couple of years ago I lived for a week on plates of white beans and spelt broths. Delicious but rather repetitive if you'll excuse the pun. Where 15 years earlier visiting even as a vegetarian I finally gave up my principles for the second week because I was fainting from lack of nutrition. Malu and Alberto are to be applauded and admired.

I spent a couple of happy hours perusing my new acquisition and ransacking it for every possible new idea and innovation that might help to improve my cooking.

This is definitely not a book designed for vegans - nearly every recipe makes use of cheese, cream or eggs and the few vegan offerings seem to be afterthoughts, ersatz versions of the dairy rich menu and not original cooking in their own right. And why should vegans have to settle for cocoa powder instead of real chocolate in the glaze for their "Sacher" torte?

Even so I found one traditional dish that was entirely new to me, one recipe that I will certainly try at some point and two presentations of combinations I'm already familiar with that are intriguing, can be veganised and would be useful when entertaining. This is pretty good for me, since I already have a million cookery books and will sometimes fork out good money for another on the strength of a single novel method.

What I was not so keen on though, and it's a pity since normally biographical details are interesting in their own right, were the interspersed articles about Malu, Alberto and their son and lives before and at the Country House. When Alberto spoke for himself, the words were mostly pithy but the longer ghost written episodes were dreary and in some places appeared smug and self justifying. The penultimate paragraph of the book was also mystifying and I can only imagine something was lost in translation since despite puzzling over it for several hours I still can't extract the philosophical meat from the bacon.

Still what's important are the recipes and these are clearly and confidently written making even complicated assemblies seem practical. One has to admire chefs who happily expect that their readers will be eager to knock up their own strudel dough but such is the drive demonstrated that it's almost tempting to give it a go.

My verdict: Accept this gift gratefully but think twice about spending your money on it if you are a committed vegan.

***Update: Having just spent a bit of time on their website it seems they will likely make a 20% surcharge for vegans or other "tailor made" dietary requirements including rennet free cheese. I don't think I'll be staying there any time soon ***