brightly colored pink and yellow sliced vegetables and scattered green herbs on a white backgroundLinking up with Beth Fish Reads for Weekend Cooking.

Brighton-based Alice Hart presents a hefty volume of vegetarian recipes designed to let simple ingredients shine. The full title, Good Veg: Ebullient Vegetables, Global Flavors – a Modern Vegetarian Cookbook, though a mouthful, captures the contents well. As she says, “predominantly this is a book to celebrate fresh vegetables.”

Hart’s sprightly, convivial introduction lays out her relaxed food philosophy.  That laid-back  spirit is evident in many of her recipe notes as she encourages improvisation and substitution when needed. Refreshingly she understands not everyone lives near a gourmet market or ethnic grocery. Many of Hart’s recipes have an international scope with more than a