This is an excellent trade paperback vegetarian cookbook from the Pacific Northwest. A good reviewer must point out that the book designer totally neglected cooks’ convenience. Many of the longer recipes are cut in half by an illustration thus to follow the recipes you will be flipping pages back and forth—something cooks hate to do.

“With this plant-first collection, I take you on my vegetarian adventures…”

Yet PNW Veg is filled with numerous very nice recipes, many labeled gluten-free, vegan or both. This cookbook by Kim O’Donnel is not for the beginner. The recipes are not hard to reproduce and recipe instructions are great but mostly they are time consuming and seems like were written for local cooks. Still, many ingredients will not be easy to find even locally (purslane, sea beans, black barley, stinging nettle) but most are available in any well-stocked market.

O’Donnel writes good, useful headnotes, just as useful Kitchen Notes in sidebar and many related extras (dried beans cheat sheet, meet the radish family, getting to know Romanesco). You’ll find many unusual recipes like Cherry Tomato Cobbler, Roasted Squash Toasts. Photo illustrations are outstanding. In spite of its inconvenient recipe layout, this will be a much-used cookbook for more special occasions.

.