Veggie! 100 inspiring recipes for every occasion (New Holland, pbk, $25) is their best - inspiration for cooking vegetables, practical recipes you can use regularly and some more special occasion ones.
They range from the simple, such as winter vegetable colcannon, a potato, cabbage and carrot mash, through curries, pies, soups, pasta and salads, to exotic dishes such as sesame miso spinach, vegetable tagine and gado gado.
• The Word for Food ($20) is an unusual community cookbook.
It started as an exercise at the international writers' workshop to produce recipes with entertainingly relevant anecdotes but has been supplemented by former members and other well-known people.
Contributors range from literary figures such as C. K. Stead, Kevin Ireland and Keri Hulme, to figures such as Helen Clark and Beryl Te Wiata, and Winston Peters.
Besides a wide range of recipes and anecdotes, there are poems, stories and ramblings.
Available from www.iww.co.nz or 2/87A Kowhai Rd, Mairangi Bay, North Shore City.
• Striking a balance between healthy eating and the food children enjoy need not be difficult or boring and numerous cookbooks offer help.
In Healthy meals for healthy kids (New Holland, pbk, $25), Catherine Atkinson gives general nutrition advice and how to cut down on things such as salt, bad fats and sugar, and how to understand food labels and additives.
She gives about 80 recipes including things like omelettes, mini-pizza grills, pasta dishes, stir-fries and home-made ice cream.
Several vegetarian dishes are included.
• The Australian Women's Weekly also has a new book.
Kids' Cooking for health: easy recipes that teach kids to cook (ACP, pbk, $30) usefully has tips and suggestions for lunchboxes as well as numerous lunch, dinner and breakfast dishes - mostly with meat, eggs or cheese - drinks, and many recipes for baking and desserts.
Despite the title, I thought it sadly lacking in good vegetable recipes.
• Gordon Ramsay and his wife Tana are churning out the cookbooks (and television shows), but one recent one to strike a chord with me was Gordon Ramsay's Healthy Appetite (Quadrille, hbk, $50).
He gives about 100 relatively simple, healthy recipes for daily meals, children, entertaining, barbecues and desserts, along with tips and suggestions such as five ways with oats, or five ways with greens.
Spiced lentil soup, herb omelette, rigatone with courgettes and braised pork with leeks and pak choi are some of the mouth-watering offerings.
