How to master cooking with vegetables this summer so no one will miss meat

From Sabrina Ghayour's book, 'Bazaar' to Genevieve Taylor's 'Charred', this summer's cookbooks have been all about veggie and vegan recipes from barbecuing to making jam. Julia Platt Leonard rounds up the best

(iStock/ The Independent)

Summer is the season, whether you’re a vegetarian, vegan or an omnivore, to up the proportion of plants on your plate.

We’re spoiled for choice with seasonal fruit and veg from berries to beans – all at their best and simply waiting for a bit of culinary inspiration.

And there’s lots of inspiration out there, thanks to a slew of new plant-based and meat-free cookbooks. But what’s top of the crop?

If you like to play with fire, then Fresh Veggie BBQ (Pavilion) by David and Charlotte Bailey – founders of the award-winning street food van Wholefood Heaven – is for you. Bye-bye burgers and hello to sticky tempeh "ribs" and ember roasted pumpkin tajine. While you’re at it, make space on your shelves for Charred (Quadrille) by Genevieve Taylor. She proves that you can barbecue almost any veg with stunning results.

No one makes food pop off the page like Sabrina Ghayour. She has a knack for creating dishes that aren’t difficult to make but deliver flavour in spades. In Bazaar (Mitchell Beazley), she’s turned her eye to vegetarian cooking with dishes that bring out the best in vegetables. I’d happily eat her turmeric, spinach and sweet potato fritters every day – but then again, that goes for just about every recipe in this winning cookbook.

If you've ended up with a glut of gooseberries or too many punnets of plums? Fear not, Pam Corbin, aka Pam the Jam (Bloomsbury) is here with her eponymous cookbook. She seriously knows her stuff too, after decades in the jam and preserve business, including work at River Cottage with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Give her soft-set, low-sugar jams like super fruity raspberry or blackcurrant jams a try – less sugar and more fruit is a win-win.

Greek food – says Heather Thomas, author of The Greek Vegetarian (Phaidon) – is a gift for vegetarians and vegans. It’s a cuisine that historically has relied much more on vegetables, beans, seeds, nuts, fruit and, of course, olive oil than it has on meat. It’s honest food that lets the ingredients shine, and in her hands there’s a freshness and lightness that’s perfect for sun-drenched summer dining.

Summer screams for ice cream and the Mezger brothers – Chow and Alex – know their scoops. They’re sons of the founder of award-winning ice cream maker Jude’s (named after their Mum) and authors of Jude’s Ice Cream & Desserts (Kyle Books). Yes, there’s dairy and eggs, but they also have vegan iced delights too, like their banana and nut butter ice cream or vegan double dark chocolate ice cream.

There’s a zen-like calm reading Greenfeast (4^th Estate), the latest from Nigel Slater. Perhaps it’s the simple, yet graceful way he describes a dish: greens, coconut curry is "vibrant, verdant". Or the brushstrokes by artist Tom Kemp that punctuate pages throughout the book. Or simply that Slater writes so beautifully about how he – like so many of us – is eating less meat. But ultimately it’s the recipes. I dare you to open the book at any page and not say to yourself, “Yes, I’d fancy that for dinner tonight.”

If you’re looking for family-friendly recipes – especially if you’ve got veg-phobic kids – then The Veggie Cookbook (Mitchell Beazley) by Camilla Stephens is worth a flick. Stephens – co-founder of Higgidy Pies – has, in her words, a "knack for hiding veg in food". Dishes like her squash mac and cheese and chocolate beet brownie cups should do the trick and sneak in at least a few of their five a day, without them even knowing.

Little Green Kitchen (Hardie Grant) by David Frenkiel and Luise Vindahl, is the latest in the Green Kitchen cookbook series. This time they’re serving up simple, vegetarian recipes to get kids (and adults) eating more veg and to encourage little ones to help out in the kitchen. The recipes are bright, full of colour and crunch (feast your eyes on the baked coconut tempura veggies, for example) and just the ticket, whether you’re vegetarian or not.

When Meera Sodha was asked to write a vegan recipe column, there was one problem: she wasn’t vegan. But she found that writing recipes minus meat, fish, dairy and eggs forced her to cook more creatively. Now she’s included some of her favourites in East (Fig Tree), her latest cookbook. There are vegetarian recipes too, plus suggestions on turning vegetarian recipes vegan. The focus is on full-on flavours and dishes that are quick and easy to make.

Last but not least is The Garden Chef (Phaidon), which isn’t a vegetarian cookbook or even a traditional cookbook. Instead it captures in words and pictures some of the world’s best restaurants and their kitchen gardens.

From the rooftop garden at The Dairy in Clapham South London (it supplies the restaurant’s herbs and salad greens), to the on-site hydroponic garden at Cultivar in Boston, Massachusetts and the sprawling five-acre organic Singlethread Farm in Northern California – there’s plenty of plant-based inspiration for cook and gardener alike.