Vegetarian cookbooks to be inspired by

A friend recently tweeted that she needed some advice as she had unexpected vegetarian dinner guests arriving. I was a little puzzled. Surely cooking vegetarian isn't *that* hard, or indeed that unusual, these days.

Perhaps all she really needed was a little inspiration from some new(ish) vegetarian cookbooks, such as :

Meat free Monday Cookbook by Paul, Stella & Mary McCartney. Following on from the campaign to get people in the UK to not eat meat at least one day per week, this cookbook has a whole year's worth of delicious "meat free Monday" menus (from breakfast to pudding).

Plenty and Ottolenghi: the cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi, based on Ottolenghi's new vegetarian columns in The Guardian as well as loads of recipes from the London Ottolenghi restaurants.

Rowan Bishop's Vegetarian Kitchen by Rowan Bishop, a New Zealander who has been writing about vegetarian cooking for ages, and has filled this new book with fantastic favourites as well as plenty of new dishes.

So next time you need some vegetarian inspiration, or perhaps you want to try something new, or even be prepared for those unexpected dinner guests, take a look at the vegetarian cooking section (start browsing from 641.5636 in the nonfiction section at your nearest library).