Old Fashioned Vegetarian Food

[Glitterbiscuits]

I ate at Good Earth in Leicester last week. It's a totally vegetarian restaurant. It's been open nearly 50 years.

The menu is great, so unpretentious. I'd love to recreate some of their style of dishes. They had things like parsnip loaf, bean bake. Much more of an emphasis on grains and pulses.

I used to make a great nut loaf and a veggie shepherd's pie.
We eat too much pasta, chilli, curry etc.

I want to move back to basics. Can anyone suggest some old ( I want to say hippy style) dishes they love or used to love?

Let me know if anyone wants any recipes from this one

These

Also have more, if anyone has requests

I had that Rose Elliott Christmas one. The Sainsburys one in your photo is volume 2 of the one I’ve lost and just ordered from Amazon

This is my favourite book, originally printed in the 1960's

Every possible combination for every possible vegetable, and combination dishes too.

I grew up on homity pie. I think I will make it this weekend!

Gosh, I had a copy of that one too. Long gone, sadly.

Got the Enchanted Broccoli Forest one! 🙂
The New Cranks cookery book?

Inspired by this thread and a spud glut, I made Homity Pie today. 😆

@LunaNorth I recall the Body Shop washing grains well! The original Body Shop deserves its own thread.

There's a Govindas in London and another in Swansea.

I had that Sainsbury’s one, back when I was a veggie teenager.

I’ve just decided to stick to fish only, so this is a very timely thread.

I absolutely loved it. My best-ever Christmas present was when I was 12, and my sister gave me an enormous basket full of Body Shop stuff - we didn’t have one in our town, but she lived away and I use to love visiting the Body Shop when we went to see her.

She’d bought tons of the little bottles over the weeks and there was so much of it! I can smell the banana conditioner and peppermint foot lotion even now. Happy days.

used to loving going to food for thought in Covent Garden. Their recipe book of the same name has their classic dishes in.

Loved Sarah Brown and her veggie crumble - I'm going to make it this weekend now !

https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/simon-hope/reluctant-vegetarian-cookbook/9780434346677?cqsrc=googleeads&cqcmp=18059580451&cqqcon=&cqmed=pla&cqqplac=&cqnet=x&gaddsource=1&gbraid=0AAAAADZzAIAtvelnWDKBUYfOnApqnyVM&gclid=Cj0KCQiA84CvBhCaARIsAMkAvkLo77xwYDEY6B-Vh0goOXjtP9wdmYUmBm6VVEyTbtoWw9XJ-s0FbgaAj3-EALw_wcB#GOR001657678

Also, a great basic old-fashioned veggie cookbook from the owner of a restaurant in my area . Can't recommend it enough.I spent most of my 1990s student days cooking from this book and still love it. !

The days of protein combining!

Yay! I want to cook it again asap now but promised the kids macaroni cheese this weekend and it might be too much to have both these two nights running!

I remember Hendersons. My first taste of proper veggie food as a child. Watching this thread with interest- so that I can find out how to recreate some of the dishes I ate there

Has anyone got a great recipe for a vegetarian shepherds pie (preferably not using soya mince)? My previous efforts have been too stodgy and lacking in the gravy element 😞

I use Merchant Gourmet packet puy lentils and a tomato based sauce - DD1 is actually veggie and I'm never sure quite how she feels about the taste of gravy, though she has had the chicken one recently. I just make some normal Bisto separately, as none of the rest of us is veggie anyway and I'd always make gravy separately even with a mince shepherd's pie.

So I make a mirepoix with a large onions, two fat cloves of garlic, a carrot and a celery stick in the food processor. Cook this slowly in oil for ten minutes, add two sachets of lentils, a veg stock pot, a carton of passata, a handful of chopped parsley, a good pinch of sea salt and plenty of black pepper, usually some hot water from the kettle as well, watching the moisture level as it cooks, and cook it for about 20 minutes. Usually I can get this ready in about the same time as boiling potatoes, ricing them then making a buttery and cheesy mash for the top. Then I often add frozen peas to the hot lentil mixture, give it a good stir, coat with the mashed potato, sprinkle some extra grated cheese and bake in a hot oven for at least 20 minutes or however long it takes to brown the top.

It makes about six portions.

DH not a very meaty person but loves mince and sausages, says he prefers the lentil one to the meat one now.

Spanakopita rice with eggs from a Lidl recipe online. I had it last night. Lovely and very filling.

Coral lentils (I get mine from Hodmedods) are great in things like lentil shepherd’s pie because they form a sort of ‘gravy’ as they cook. I pressure cook the lentils in water and add veggies, tomatoes etc after.

That sounds nice. This one, I take it? I think I'd use brown rice.

https://recipes.lidl.co.uk/recipes/spanakopita-rice-and-egg-bake

I make my shepherds pie with garlic, onions, peppers, any courgettes/squashes I have and any beans or chick peas. I also add grated carrot and then a small amount of tomato passata and some thyme and a bay leaf or two and salt and pepper. And some water and cook it slowly until it is thick enough to hold the potato but still has gravy. If it needs any actual thickening, I'll just put the immersion blender in for a very short period to mush some up [seconds is enough]. Then put it in the final pan. Then add the mash, with cheese and cheese on top and cook.