Forget soaked pulses and brown rice: Nadine Abensur, former Food Director of the Cranks vegetarian restaurant group, explains how meat-free dishes can be delicious, smart and in tune with today's style of lighter, healthier eating

I've always been baffled by the reputation of vegetarian food as heavy and brown, and even more so by the kind of cookery that led to that unfortunate stereotype.

Vegetarian cooking should resonate with the abundance and colour of freshly grown vegetables in all their vast array. Organic, seasonal and locally grown or not, one cannot but wonder at the choice.

These days, just about the only brown food I can think of is meat. But awareness of the sufficiency of vegetables and of the relatively low need for protein (an adult female needs as little as 36g of protein a day, an adult male only 50g) and carbohydrate has dawned slowly.

'Real' vegetarian food
In a way, I'm thrilled at the progress made in the realm of vegetarian cooking - certainly, you're rarely fobbed off with an omelette any more (though I wouldn't say no to my petits pois omelette). But in another way, I'm left with a slight disappointment. Excellent and uniquely vegetarian restaurants are still rare, and there are few exclusively 'real' vegetarian chefs. So many have settled for the dubious 'demi-veg' tag that you could be forgiven for thinking chicken an honorary vegetable.

My new book, The Cranks Bible, is written for all those - and I know I'm in good company - who are fed up of wading through a pile of meat or fish recipes before getting to the (smaller) vegetable chapter.

I would like to reverse that and see meat take its rightful place as the bit on the side, the occasional treat. I know that not everyone can truly give it up - mostly it gives you up, and in my experience this is always accompanied by a growing spiritual, or at the very least aesthetic, awareness. Perhaps you will find a sprinkling of this here and there as you try my recipes.

• Nadine's Hot Niçoise
• Chickpea Salad with Coriander, Sunblushed Tomatoes and Halloumi
• Carrots Braised with Cumin, Saffron and Garlic
• A Proper Thai Noodle Salad
• Pecan Pie

Extracted from The Cranks Bible, Nadine Abensur (Cassell, £25)

For more wonderful iVillage recipes by Nadine, click here.

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