Vanilla Black

Book excerpt: 'The food is creative, beautifully presented and exciting.' Guardian 'To us, the fact our cooking is vegetarian is incidental - we just like to eat good food. We love to reinvent classic dishes, create new flavour combinations, source unusual ingredients and occasionally we use a microwave because well, why not?' From the start, Andrew and Donna's rule was, no pasta bake and no vegetable curry. They set up Vanilla Black as a restaurant with a mission - to reinvent expectations about what it means to eat vegetarian food. It's all about the flavour, the first bite that intrigues, the surprising, the unusual, the recipes your friends will want to steal. From Jerusalem artichoke, white wine and thyme pie to a reinvention of classic tomatoes on toast, from Savoy cabbage pudding to broad bean and lemon cheesecake, from smoky baked beans to Marmite new potatoes, and from parsnip cake with Horlicks frosting to cherry Bakewell tart with marzipan custard, this surprising and inventive cookbook will change the way you think about food - and leave you wanting more. Vanilla Black restaurant is co-owned by Andrew Dargue, head chef, and his partner Donna Conroy, who runs front of house. www.vanillablack.co.uk @vanillablack1