It is easy to fall into a vegetable rut... you pour all your effort into making interesting and diverse main courses but end up serving them all with the same steamed greens or roasted roots. Sophie Grigson's new book will put a stop to that, inspiring you to get creative with its wide array of tempting vegetable dishes.

This book is an authoritative guide to choosing, storing and cooking veg. It is divided up according to vegetable type with chapters on roots, shoots and stems, fruits, squashes, pods and seeds, the onion family, brassicas, leafy greens and salad leaves. Sophie intended to only include vegetables that are commonly found in this country, but her obvious enthusiasm for the subject has lead to her collection ranging from the familiar to the obscure. She writes about over seventy vegetables including samphire, jicama, garlic scapes and cardoons. There could be no better reference to consult when the organic veggie box arrives and you have no idea what to do with all of those Jerusalem artichokes and that curly kale.

Vegetables needn't be merely rendered as side dishes and this book shows how to make them take a starring role in your cooking. It is not, however, only a book for vegetarians. The recipes include a full range of meat, fish and vegetarian dishes, as well as representing starters, soups, main courses and even some vegetable puddings. Choose from dishes such as Sweet and Sour Stuffed Aubergines, Crisp Slow-Roast Duck with Turnips, Carrot and Pickled Pepper Soup or Kumara Crème Brulee.

Not only is this book information packed, and illustrated with tempting pictures, but it makes for a very enjoyable read. Sophie Grigson has a warm and accessible style of writing, and she peppers her text with anecdotes and her personal preferences. You cannot help but be enthused by her passion for kumara and the hard-to-trace chervil root. Her love of vegetables runs so deep that she even resorted to smuggling oca back from Ecuador in her suitcase.

The author's mother, Jane Grigson, wrote the now classic Vegetable Book. Sophie has taken on the challenge to bring the subject up to date to represent the wide range of vegetables that we now have available to cook with, and has done so in her own inimitable style. This book is set to be the definitive vegetable text for a new generation of Grigson fans.

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