Looking for a cookbook with good vegetarian / pescatarian dinner recipes that are not too heavy on or focused on refined carbs like pasta or rice. We are omnivores in general, and good home cooks. We’re just in that tricky spot of wanting to cut back a bit on our meat consumption yet bored with/tired of our rotation of alternatives and also not wanting carb bombs every night. Thanks.
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Some cookbooks focus on bowls which give you good starting points around those with many variations, e.g.
Bowls by ATK
Bowls of Goodness by Nina Ollson
Bowls of Plenty by Carolynn Careno
Some other good vegetable focused books
Six Season by Joshua McFadden
Ottolenghi books - Plenty, Plenty More etc
Thanks! Looking into a few of these now. I have Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem and everything I’ve made from that book has been a winner.
I really like Real Food Heals by Seamus Mullen. I’ve cooked about 60% of the recipes in the book and have only had one clinker. There are a few meat based recipes but most of them are vegetable forward. You can add the protein of your choice if you want.
I’ve also had good luck with Michael Symon’s Fix It With Food . The recipes in this book have been very successful.
Chef driven cookbooks can be hit or miss. There were several things that drew me to these books. Both chefs have autoimmune issues with Chef Mullen’s being full blown rhumatoid arthritis, and both needed anti-inflammatory diets. Their recipes use easily found ingredients, are totally approachable for a home cook, are seasoned appropriately and they actually taste good and have become recipes I want to make over and over. Both chefs understand complementary flavors and seasoning, plus they used their own experiences to develop their recipes. Keto and Paleo both tend to be anti-inflammatory but they often rely on specialized ingredients and the recipe results are sometimes not as palatable as they sound. Real Food Heals and Fix it With Food are more along the lines of clean eating rather than falling into a specialized diet category. Both books may be the result of autoimmune issues, but they really are just good, clean food that tastes good and is good for the body.
Some of the reviews for Real Food Heals complain that some of the ingredients are obscure or hard to source. I didn’t find that to be the case. If you live in an urban area they aren’t hard to find, nor do the prep methods require great skill.
I have Six Seasons and have cooked from it with so-so success. Some recipes I really liked, others not so much. Ottelenghi’s books are also fantastic, tho’ they sometime require more time and effort than I’m willing to put into a recipe these days 
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Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” is my go-to for inspiration. I tend to adapt my cooking to what’s available and usually riff off his ideas. (There is a Revised edition, published in 2017.)
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Wow I just looked up Real Food Heals and am definitely going to pick it up. Thank you!
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