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?

@shearwater2
@Craftycorvid
@AlisonDonut

Thank you for sharing those ideas

That's the one.

After plans for a pie, we didn't have time, so last night I made a recipe we all love, from Rose Elliot's Veggie Meals In Minutes.

I think it's called Quick Beany Bake. It's essentially sweetcorn, a can of baked beans and a tin of other beans, mixed together and heated through then shoved in a pie dish with torn bread on top them a whole pile of cheese on top of that and grilled till the cheese melts. It's about as basic and storecupboard as you can get, but oh my, it's heaven on a plate.

I’ve got my mum to send a the vegetable crumble recipe from Cranks so that’s what we’re having tonight. Has the added bonus of using up a lot of the veg box as well!
The only problem for my family of this sort of cooking is it’s not very coeliac friendly- lots of wholemeal flour and oats.

This blog has the vegetable crumble recipe. https://granebakes.food.blog/2020/05/21/cranks-my-original-vegetarians-some-veggie-recipes-for-you/

I've made something like that in the past with a base mixture of onions, garlic, aubergines and tomatoes, could be mushrooms as well - no flour, just reduced down a bit like a pasta sauce, herbs and spices added to taste. Really lovely with a nice green vegetable on the side.

Found my Plymouth Arts Centre books and favourite recipe, vegetarian food really was so much simpler back then.

Agree about the gluten in a lot of these, but easy enough to tweak with GF alternatives.

@ancientand I was inspired by that flan you posted from the Rose Elliot cookbook but I didn't have aubergine, so have replaced it with a bunch of swiss chard. It's very frugal though - 150ml milk and 2 eggs! My usual quiche custard is 300ml double cream, 4 eggs + 2 yolks (you use the whites to brush the case to keep it crisp).

I might have to serve buttered new potatoes alongside, my kids will think I'm nuts (and that they've died and gone to heaven, they love buttered potatoes). And roasted red peppers with balsamic.

Yes, I have developed a wheat allergy and it's quite alarming seeing how much wheat/gluten was in some of my staples back then.

Could you make it with buckwheat flour and ground almonds?

I’ll be subbing in Dove’s farm gf flour and maybe some almonds and polenta for texture. Buckwheat is a good idea, I don’t really use it as it’s got such a pronounced flavour but it might be just the thing for Cranks recipes.

The only problem for my family of this sort of cooking is it’s not very coeliac friendly- lots of wholemeal flour and oats.

Quinoa flour? Chickpea, green pea, fava bean, yellow pea, marrow fat pea flours? (I swear I don’t work for them - but) Hodmedod’s, linked above, offer all these. I daresay they’re available elsewhere too. Or you could invest in a small domestic mill and grind your own!

Tonight's dinner. Swiss chard tart/flan/quiche, lamb's lettuce dressed with olive oil lemon and salt, buttered tiny potatoes. Finally I roasted 4 peppers at 180 fan for 20 mins with cumin seeds, a punnet of cherry toms added and roasted a final 10 mins.

Would like to think it is very old-school veggie

That looks lovely @Xiaoxiong

Delicious @Xiaoxiong definitely the food I would want to eat

Looks great! Wholemeal pastry?

75/25 white/wholemeal pastry, I haven't managed to make it 100% wholemeal and roll out properly without going crumbly. All advice welcome!

No advice from me, I'm afraid. It's been years and years - decades - since I last tried making wholemeal pastry. I had an epiphany moment a long time ago when it occurred to me that pastry isn't a health food or something we were going to eat day in day out (unlike bread, say) so there wasn't a lot of point in trying to make it healthier and in the process less enjoyable to eat. So I've always made pastry with white flour since. (Also, unless I'm making it for a group that may include vegetarians, I'm afraid I use half and half butter and lard, but that's another story.)

I have had good wholemeal pastry, though - just not made by me!

In the spirit of the thread, I made some mushroom soup yesterday with a box of mushrooms that were starting to look a bit sad. Two onions, several garlic cloves, 454g chestnut mushrooms, all roughly chopped. Sauted the onions in butter on a lowish heat, added garlic then mushrooms turned up the heat a bit, then added vegetable stock and plenty of grated nutmeg and black pepper. Didn't take long to cook. Blended with my stick blender. It's not completely smooth but that's fine, I like a bit of texture. Absolutely lovely.

My Cranks book has turned up, and I've found a recipe for Bara brith in it. I've already soaked the fruit for a different recipe so I'm debating whether to turn it into a hybrid.
Their cottage pie recipe tells you to use their nut roast recipe, but make it slacker with stock, and dollop mash on top.

@Xiaoxiong I pretty much only ever use some variety of wholemeal flour so any pastry I make will be wholemeal. I have (somewhere) a great recipe using olive oil rather than butter - it actually says don’t bother trying to roll it out in one piece - just squidge pieces into your baking tray / tin. Once it’s baked you can’t tell the difference.

Any ideas for fussy people who won't eat things if they don't look 'right'??

That makes sense. May have another go!

That looks so good @Xiaoxiong

In fact, it has inspired me to make a frittata tonight - I am using spring greens, mushrooms, peppers, onions and cherry tomatos. On the side I am going to do braised lettuce and a jacket potato with sour cream and chives.

DH is away all day doing his Manly Mumsnet Hobby so he will be delighted when he gets back!

I've found that Asda's gluten free flour is a really good balance of ingredients for cake making, so possibly pastry too.

Everyone's photos look amazing, I want to come to lunch with everyone here!

As for presentation @HoldMyHalo , that is so individual as to what the person finds tempting... Maybe go tidier, go smaller?
Or if its a veggy curry, pack the curry into a small bowl and place it on an island of rice, with a coriander garnish?
Or go more finger food style, arranged in a nice pattern?
Garnish with the person's favourite herb or veggie?
I think once you associate a meal with a happy tummy, you can be more forgiving of how it looks, as in not Insta perfect!

I am going to have another go at the whole wheat pastry as well, I love the nubbly toasty taste so worth another try.

Tonight's old school veggie option - pizza beans and garlic bread! Inhaled by DCs (the garlic bread definitely helped). It's a smitten kitchen recipe but inspired by old school veggie-ness I doubled the carrots and celery and increased the tomatoes by 50%, which was sufficient to stretch one jar of Bold Bean Co butter beans to 6 generous portions.