World Food Café Vegetarian Bible Book Review

World Food Cafe Vegetarian Bible

For over twenty years, Chris and Carolyn Caldicott owned the World Food Café in London’s Covent Garden, where they cooked and served delicious vegetarian world cuisine. They’re also the authors of numerous cookbooks, including the fabulous World Food Café Quick and Easy, which I reviewed last year.

However, the World Food Café books are far more than just cookbooks. They’re filled with stunning photography taken by Chris, a freelance travel photographer and former Expedition Photographer-in-Residence at the Royal Geographical Society, as well as travel anecdotes and descriptions of the traditional cuisine of each country they visited.

World Food Cafe Vegetarian Bible

I especially love the anecdotes describing how they first encountered the dishes. I find they really bring the dishes to life and make me even more excited about trying them for myself!

World Food Cafe Vegetarian Bible

Their latest book – World Food Café Vegetarian Bible – is filled with over two hundred of their favourite vegetarian recipes, collected during their travels. Over 130 of the recipes happen to be vegan (and are helpfully marked with a ‘V’), which means that they’re also suitable for anyone with dairy or egg allergies. Many of the remaining dishes could easily be ‘veganised’ by substituting the milk or butter with non-dairy alternatives.

World Food Cafe Vegetarian Bible

The recipes are organised geographically, with chapters on North Africa & Arabia, West & East Africa, The Indian Ocean, India, Pakistan & Nepal, Southeast Asia, French Polynesia, Central & Southern America, and the Caribbean. The final chapter is dedicated to Puddings.

World Food Cafe Vegetarian Bible

This book landed on my doorstep at the start of the Christmas holidays, and the timing couldn’t have been better. During my two week break, I had the luxury of quality time to immerse myself in the book, and I read it from cover to cover. As I was reading, I could feel myself being transported to all the wonderful places described. Hopefully one day, I’ll be able to visit them for real. But, for now, I’ll happily take a virtual tour by cooking my way through this wonderful book 🙂

World Food Cafe Vegetarian Bible

I do need to adapt the recipes slightly to suit my family’s tastes but this isn’t a problem. The authors have strived to maintain the authenticity of the recipes, which means that they tend to include a fair amount of oil and ‘heat’. Luckily, it’s easy to adapt both of these. Lil’ L is still very sensitive to hot spices (as I’m sure a lot of children are). For now, I simply hold off adding the chilli and other hot spices until I’ve removed his portion of the dish, then I add some ‘heat’ for the adults. This way he still gets to enjoy the world cuisines and share the same meals as the rest of the family.

World Food Cafe Vegetarian Bible

We’ve tried two recipes so far – the West African Sweet Potatoes in a Cayenne, Ginger and Groundnut Sauce (which I posted last week) and the Borneo Rainforest Vegetables (pictured below). Both were totally scrumptious! (I’ve already made the Sweet Potato dish twice!)

World Food Cafe Vegetarian Bible

If you’re a fan of world cuisines, I’m sure you’ll love this book, regardless of whether or not you’re vegetarian. The book retails at £20, and is currently on sale at Amazon UK for £13.20 with free delivery. I think this is extremely good value for a hardback, full colour, 380+ page book.

It can also be purchased from Amazon.com. For international friends, it might be worth noting that the recipe ingredients in this book are in ounces and grams only, and not cups.

GIVEAWAY!

How would you like to win your own copy of the World Food Café Vegetarian Bible? Well, the publishers Frances Lincoln have very generously offered to send a copy to one of my lovely readers. This is one seriously great prize! 

To be in with a chance of winning, simply leave me a comment answering the question featured in the Rafflecopter below. Do make sure you tick the box in the Rafflecopter to register that you have done so!

If you’re new to Rafflecopter, it’s pretty easy! Simply click on ‘Use Your Email’ and enter a name and your email address (rest assured it won’t be published anywhere). You can also log in using your Facebook account, if you wish. A quick demo of how to use Rafflecopter can be accessed here.

There are a number of additional ways you can enter in order to increase your chances of winning. You will find these listed in the Rafflecopter. All entries will be verified prior to the winner being selected.

The giveaway is open to all UK residents, aged 18 and over (sorry international readers!)

The closing date is Friday 7th February 2014 at midnight GMT.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck everyone! xx

 

41 thoughts on “World Food Café Vegetarian Bible Book Review

  1. This book looks beautiful! I love the idea of really being able to get a sense of what the dish is about, and trying numerous different cuisines when you arent able to go to the places they are from. In answer to the raffle copter question, I would love to visit family in Düsseldorf, Germany. Love your blog. All the best.

  2. This looks a great book to explore and try out the recipes from. Even though I’m not vegetarian myself my brother is and I enjoy cooking him different things when he comes to visit us and I often cook a vegetarian meal for Mum & I to cut back on our meat consumption.
    I also love travelling and reading about countries. I’d also be able to pass on the names of recommended restaurants to my brother for when he and my sister in law go for an overseas holiday’

  3. The book looks gorgeous, and the recipes mouthwatering.
    Any dessert in any desert is my idea of heaven on earth.

  4. I knew I wanted this book when I saw the sweet potato recipe! I love exploring cuisines from around the world so I’m certain I’d love the book.
    I’m lucky to have traveled quite a bit but India is high on my bucket list 😀

  5. This looks lovely, great that there are loads of Vegan recipes too! The one place I really wanted to travel was South America, which I did for 6 months a few years back, so if I didn’t go back there again, I would say I’d really like to go to New Zealand.

  6. Almost impossible to narrow that down to one place! Well, I am off to Berlin for the first time this weekend but seems like cheating to use that as my answer! I think Iceland, Romania and Morocco are pretty up there.

  7. This year we are travelling to cornwall to get warmed up with the business and travel lifestyle. After that who knows! Canada is still my top destination of choice 🙂

  8. Japan – long wanted to visit to see the beautiful gardens first hand but also to eat their tofu dishes – I’m sure they would be much tastier than mine and I could learn how to cook them authentically.

  9. I would go to India. My boyfriend is vegetarian and with almost 40% of the Indian population being vegetarian he’d be in his element. We’d work our way around taking in the sights, smells and tastes of the local street foods and markets. What a buzz it would be!

  10. I’ve been lucky enough to go to some of my favourite places but I’d live to travel to Iceland or Japan. Complete opposites!

  11. I would love to visit Columbia. My grandmother came here when she was young and I would love to see where she came from. I also have family there, so it would be great to meet them too!

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