An excellent resource for those looking to reduce the amount of meat in their diets. The flexible nature of the recipes means you can adapt them to what you currently have in the fridge, or to the different requirements of various family members or guests. This book encourages us to think more about the choices we make when shopping and cooking without being preachy or guilt-inducing.

I was hoping to leave a review but the link had expired. I can comment on the cover and I think it's beautiful and enticing. Would've loved to try some recipes as I am a meat eater but am trying to cut back as I love veggies

I downloaded this before I understood how to retrieve the galleys that were not for kindle. By the time I understood how to open up the download, it had expired. So I am unable to provide any feedback for this.

I liked the style of this book a lot. The photography and design is contemporary and elegant, a beautiful book.

The recipes were excellent, a great idea to make recipes that can be adapted to suit all needs. The store cupboard section was well thought out and provided me some handy ideas of ways to add taste to recipes already make. The variety of recipes is good, some classics and some creative use of ingredients.

A good staple recipe book, that I could imagine keeping on the shelf to be delved into time after time.  

This book was provided by NetGalley in exchange for my honest review of it.

Nicely put together cookbook with some great recipes ideas. Recipes aren't overly complicated. It's a nice idea for a present for both vegetarians and meat eaters.

A fantastic premise for a cookbook, The Flexible Vegetarian appreciates those of us who aren't strictly vegetarian or vegan. Amazing recipes that my whole, varied family enjoyed. The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous and the accompanying writing is entertaining, engaging, funny and realistic. Perfect for busy families, those looking for healthy recipes and the Vegetarian-ish folks out there! If you're a Meatless-Monday person, this book is for you!

The Flexible Vegetarian is beautifully illustrated and probably a great addition to anyone's library.
The recipes are easy to follow and work well.
I like the idea of giving options. Because while I like the occasional vegetarian dish, I also do like eating meat.
But then I also have several vegetarian friends. This book it for all home cooks in my situation.
Great alternative to the usual usual veg.

I really like books like this, offering approachable recipes with a vegetarian focus. Many of the dishes are familiar, with small twists on the way I might make it: shaksuka, sweet potato-bean tacos, vegetable soups. I was pleased to find some beautiful and creative use of paneer, turmeric, celery root, barley, and other ingredients I like but tend to use the same way over and over.

This is a go-to-book to those vegetarians who need to cook for their non-vegetarian partners or children aside from their own meal. The recipes are flexible and easy to follow.

Approachable recipes that veggie and meat lover alike will love to make. This will be a great book for people who have family members who are meat free

This was a fun cookbook! It's pretty brief, but I like the way it's set up! I am not a vegetarian, but I would absolutely make most of these recipes. They are simple and look quite tasty. I love the idea that they can veggie dishes, or that you can add in some meat and the ideas that they provide for that. Bonus: the pictures in the book are beautiful.

A great cookbook if you're looking to step more into the world of vegetarian dining, but aren't ready to commit to switching over completely. You're given vegetarian recipes and flexible alternatives to make them non-vegetarian on each page. So if you're wanting a vegetarian dish or not feeling that way for dinner tonight you can still pick something delicious from this cookbook.

I have bought several of Jo Pratt’s cookery books, and found them practical and enjoyable. This one is no exception. The recipes are easy to follow and mouthwatering. I very much like her suggestions for adapting the vegetarian recipes to suit meat eaters, though, in my experience most people nowadays are more than happy with the vegetarian version. This is a well thought out and practical book with recipes to suit all tastes and occasions. I would recommend it very highly.

I loved this ARC from NetGalley. Although I read it after Hurricane Maria ravaged my island, I look forward to a time when there is food available in the supermarkets so that I may try the dozens of recipes that captured my eye.

Peter Gordon’s book are amongst my favourite cookery books, so seeing his recommendation on the front page of “The Flexible Vegetarian” I was really keen to read it. With an increasing number of friends and family turning to vegetarian options, or at the least to less meat on the menu, I thought the concept of the book was excellent.
But I was disappointed as the book just didn’t fulfill it’s promise.
On the positive side, the soups I tried were absolutely superb! Lovely creative flavor combinations with interesting garnishings. I’d certainly buy a book on soups written by Jo Pratt.
Miso mushrooms on toast, quinoa meatballs, fennel and aubergine paella were a few of the recipes that sounded interesting and I would be keen to try, but I found the flexible options (adding meat or fish) seemed contrived and unnecessary sometimes. The seasonal vegetable tarts looked really interesting, but they are vegetable tarts, and even die-hard meat eaters in my family would eat them, so adding meat options seemed superfluous. Lining individual dishes with Serrano ham to fill with Macaroni Cheese? On the other hand, some suggestions worked well, such as the Chinese Potstickers – swapping shitake for minced pork, or the Spiced Poke using tofu or salmon. But for me those are obvious variations, and maybe this was where the book fell down for me – I was hoping to have some really interesting recipes where I could make some unusual variations for meat-eaters and non-meat eaters.
The meat and fish recipes tagged on at the end of the book (which were good recipes!) seemed to be an after-thought – put them in at the end with no photos and “hope the die-hard vegetarians won’t see them?” Why put them in at all if they are going to take such a lowly position in the book. Good photographs of these dishes could have taken the place of the very random building shots included in the front and back of the book!

Loads of really useful recipes in this book - especially when you’re not quite the whole vegetarian that your husband/wife/partner has turned into! Not particularly difficult to find the ingredients but give some delicious and quirky ideas for easy weeknight meals and some amazing soups for a weekend. I keep coming back to this book for inspiration!

So I was Vegetarian for 5 years and then I met my current partner and he loves meat. Even pork, which I never touched even when I ate meat. A religious reason and now I don't eat it because I know how bad it is for you. Not that any meat these days is really good for you... I'm getting off topic.

I stopped being a vegetarian because it was too hard (too expensive) to cook two different meals every single mealtime. I wish he were up to trying more of my kind of foods as I tried his nasty bacon once. Though that will never happen. He's so narrow minded it's not funny. Also, am I the only one who has noticed that meat is often a guy thing? Like my brother, father, future father-in-law, all three of my male grandparents... they simply can't live without meat!

Point is, I was hoping this would show me dishes that maybe had the lighter meats, like fish and chicken rather than beef and pork. It did show some good ones but most of the recipes in here were very 'fancy', I love to cook and I am pretty dang good at it but I'm a Southern cook, we aren't all about how fancy a dish or how good it looks. We value taste above all that so while this did show some great ones most just aren't going to work in my house.

So if you want more fancy dishes, grab this, otherwise... I'm still holding out for that perfect dish that may just convince my partner to give it a try even though it has no meat.

Thanks for NetGalley for this cookbook in exchange for an honest review.

Review will go live on my blog 11/11/2017
http://sweetcherry69.blogspot.com/

I’ve been a vegetarian for a long time – since I was 12, so over 30 years.  My husband, though, and my daughter (who is seven), are confirmed meat eaters.  As we all love cooking, we have had to figure out a way to all eat well – things that are healthy, tasty, and (at least during the week) easy.  Given their need for meat, and my non-need, it’s sometimes a challenge.

The current compromise is that we alternate – we have a non-meat meal, then a meal that includes meat but I take the meat out; sometimes that results in me eating plain pasta or a plate of veggies.  They aren’t very exciting.  Even my husband will admit the veggie meals are usually tastier and different from the norm – but there is no meat, and he misses that after a few days. 

The Flexible Vegetarian takes this problem and offers solutions, delivering a range of tasty, interesting and healthy food that you can eat with or without meat, and not just with the meat added to the side.  I have to say I was a little sceptical but it seems to work.  We’ve tried two of the recipes so far, both of which were a success, with more to follow this week.

First up was Cauliflower Cream Cheese Soup with sweet roast onions.  I have always had a love / hate relationship with cauliflower soup in that I once had a bowl in a restaurant and it was one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.  Since then I have hated every version I have tried.  To find a good one has felt like a mission and – I am pleased to say – mission accomplished.

This soup was delicious.  I cut the recipe the book in half as we didn’t need to make enough to serve 8 and I couldn’t find the nigella seeds it called for as a garnish but other than that I followed the recipe to the letter and enjoyed every spoonful.

(you can find a photo of my attempt at this recipe on my blog).
. 
The meat version includes cooking with pancetta but we didn’t do that here as it felt, for me, like I would be eating meat.  I did both a non-meat and meat version of the second recipe I tried, seasonal vegetable tart (picking the autumn version as, well, it’s autumn).  This meant butternut squash and sage – favourites of mine – with Parma ham added to my husband and daughter’s tart.  I think if I’d make this one again, I’d up the sage but there will definitely be an again as this was tasty.

(there is a photo of my attempt at this recipe on my blog.)

Next up is the roasted aubergine and fennel paella or Turkish pide, both of which look delicious and which I wish I could show you photos off but it just isn’t working to try and do this from the computer screen.  Trust me though – they look good!

So, will this book be for everyone? No.  But for people with a veggie in the family or who want to cut out meat from their diet a couple of days a week, this is a great book and one I can highly recommend.

Enjoy!

This book appealed to me as a vegetarian living with a husband who is a confirmed carnivore. I also have several of Jo Platt's books which I have used pretty regularly. We already cook one base meal which is then split into a vegetarian and non-veg dish that keeps us both happy.

I must confess that I found the book rather disappointing. I found very little that I really wanted to cook and the flexitarian twist in some recipes is to remove e.g. vegetables or beans and replace them with meat or fish. This isn't useful if you are cooking for a combination of vegetarians and non-vegetarians which will be a pretty common situation - what you need are dishes which you can easily divide at the end and add meat/fish to part or serve meat/fish on the side. The core recipe is always vegetarian with the twist outlined in a small box at the end and I guess that in around half the recipes you will need to decide in advance whether you are going veggie or not because you need to add the non-veggie ingredients at an early stage in the recipe.

The book basically has six chapters of recipes - breakfast/brunch, soups/broths, small plates, big plates, dips & bits. As is usual, the breakfasts section more or less passes me by - I have neither the time nor the inclination to make smoked bean quesadillas or paneer corncakes, shakshuka or courgette fritters with smashed avocado and fried halloumi for breakfast, although the latter is a very nice lunch or dinner (when you have the 50 minutes to make the dish). The soups were a bit meh - corn chowder than could become seafood chowder (such a stretch!); spinach soup to which you can add anchovies,; or carrot, coconut and cardamom soup which really doesn't need prawns (the idea of it sounds really unappealing).

The small plates section involved several types of hummus, courgette fries, fried pickles and instructions on how to make a smashed bean, kale and tomato toast which the average five year old could manage without a recipe. The halloumi fries are nice as is the spiced cauliflower but these recipes are largely side dishes. The big plates just weren't inspiring or were things for which I have half a dozen recipes already - macaroni cheese (with the flexitarian suggestion of adding ham); mushroom, leek & chestnut pie; pearl barley & sweet potato stew; tart made using ready-rolled puff pastry which barely need a recipe; baked summer vegetables with beans. The smoky roots & brazil nut crumble was OK but again, to flex this one involved cutting down on the vegetables and adding in chicken.

For those who care about this, there is a photo of all, or at least nearly all, the recipes. Like many modern cookery books there are also too many images unrelated to food - trees & their leaves, piles of plates and most peculiarly and bafflingly a few shots at the beginning of roof tops and TV aerials at sunset, and the hall of a Victorian house.

If you are currently a meat eater looking to reduce your intake then this might be a useful book as it gives you options. If you are already vegetarian or in a mixed family the issues outlined above mean the book is of limited usefulness and it doesn't really offer lots of new ideas to make up for the other deficiencies.

I was interested in learning some vegetarian recipes, but I get out off when vegetables are referred to as steaks or the recipe offers the option of adding pork. I am actually trying to keep kosher, so pork is not an option.