New Cranks Recipe Book by Nadine Abensur

Cranks Restaurant first opened in Carnaby Street in 1961 and was hugely influential in developing the way people approached vegetarian cooking. Even in the 1960s, the proprietors at Cranks were sourcing organic vegetables and stone-ground wheat. However by the 90s, the company was not moving forward as fast as its competitors and a complete rethink was necessary. This has been achieved successfully with new interiors in their restaurants and more importantly, new ideas for the menu and putting those ideas into print.

Nadine Abensur is one of the UK's top vegetarian chefs and is the Food Director at Cranks. She was born in Morocco of French-Jewish parents and draws on her own culinary heritage and imagination in creating recipes. She runs her own vegetarian catering company, Culinary Arts.

The New Cranks Recipe Book is full of good, sensible recipes, enhanced by the superb photography of Gus Filgate. Looking through the book, the reader is not conscious of the fact that meat has no mention. Each recipe is sufficiently interesting in its own right and would satisfy even the hungriest carnivore. The recipes are varied, all fairly simple and look good. The use of colourful and contrasting ingredients has not been neglected and each dish is a masterpiece to look at. Also the ingredients are not so obscure that your local market will not have them. The chapter on puddings is a little unexciting but the recipe for orange and parsnip cake in the section on baking makes up for any shortfalls in the pudding department. One minor criticism would be that the print size used for the ingredients is very small, yet there is room on the page for it to have been slightly larger.

The food in these recipes is modern and fresh tasting, surely a good enough reason to turn vegetarian. This book, if you are new to vegetarianism, is a good starting point, or even if you just want to try something different.

AD.
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Publication Details:
pp. 255. Photography by Gus Filgate. £14.99
ISBN 0753800373. Published by Phoenix Limited.
1997

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Other books of related interest by Nadine Abensur:

Cranks Light
Cranks Fast Food
Secrets from a Vegetarian Kitchen