We had a gorgeous lunch at James Cameron's Food Forest Organics store in Greytown last week. None of us being vegan eaters, but we all were raving when we left. I've never really experimented with this type of cooking before, but I'd really like to get to grips with more plant based eating...any recommendations for books that have excellent recipes, and really good information on techniques to enhance the foods?

Deborah Madison writes very good vegetarian (not vegan) recipes. I often refer to her "The Savory Way" for an American point of view.

The other vegetarian (and mostly vegan) cook book I refer to a lot is Madhur Jaffrey's Eastern Vegetarian Cooking, which covers a vast and encyclopaedic range of Indian, South East Asian, Chinese, Turkish, Japanese and Korean staples. It is a very good read as well.

I see that Madhur Jaffrey's book is available from Book Depository for AUD$21.11 - very reasonable.

I havent tried their recipes but bosch and vegan 100 look great books.

I really like Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.

I also like the two cookbooks by the Hemsley sisters, 'The Art of Eating Well' and 'Good + Simple'. They're not strictly vegetarian but have good vegetarian recipes in them.