This book on sustainable food will have you salivating

FOR anyone who still thinks a plate of food is not complete without the addition of meat, chicken or fish, think again.

Mokgadi Itsweng’s visually appealing book proves that one can not only have all the colours of a rainbow on a dish, but that it can be delicious and good for you. Just flipping through the book makes you want to eat right off the pages.

Subtitled, Plant-forward recipes from the garden of my dreams, like most cookbooks there is a back story and, as Itsweng says, in the introduction, her love affair with food began when she was born. True story – she was born premature and overfed in her fledgling years. Then as a teen she was so skinny she was nicknamed Marantsana – Sepedi for the thin one.

At 10, she moved in with her grandmother in Mamelodi, who had a well-tended garden where butternuts, morogo, groundnuts, peanuts and mealies flourished. Tick number one for her juvenile foodie awareness.

As a bona fide foodie when she grew up, she ate and experienced food from across the world. However, the red lights went on as her body started crying out “no”. And, as her conscience also grew in eating more sustainable food, she converted to a plant rich diet. This book is testimony to how you too, can convert to eating more healthily and responsibly. Her pantry has a basis of grains and wheat items and to these she adds various items, such as plant milks, veggies and spices, herbs and natural oils.

The book is filled with amazing and innovative recipes accompanied by the tempting pics – think smoked roasted cauliflower with a red pepper sauce; stuffed baked peppers with millet; a different take on falafel using aubergine and millet (she calls them croquettes) and in the sweet department, there’s lip-smackingsounding chai and guava pudding.

There’s loads more and many of the dishes can be made from what you have available (like potatoes and beans) once you feed on her suggestions of stocking your pantry with some added staples.

While I am so excited about this book I’ve been jumping all over the place, it is actually divided into Section 1 – being the prep stage with chapters for example of how to grow your own produce; stocking your pantry and tips on repurposing your food; among others.

Section 2’s recipes include Summer, Spring, Autumn and Winter and are then subdivided with, for example, “spectacular mains”; “the side dish” and “happy endings” giving the cross page numbers. Veggielicious has taken pride of place in my kitchen.