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?

@MissMarplesNiece yes it’s the relish in the Hairy Bikers recipe above. Sweet, vinegary and tangy!

@YetAnotherSpartacus omg the Enchanted Broccoli Forest is a wonderful cook book. I love Mollie Katzens books.

Hunted charity shops at the weekend….im impatient so turned to Vinted £1 each (plus the EXTRAS!ll)

Omg that mushroom one was sooo good! What the hell was in it?

Sarah Brown's Vegetarian Kitchen is still brilliant.
And for those as old and hippy as me, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest is still a complete joy!

Hallo! 👋. So pleased to see this thread going strong. Today’s dinner shall be proper nostalgia fare in memory of the late lamented ‘Mother Nature’ cafe in Stroud: stuffed aubergines with a hearty fennel and carrot salad. Back in the day veggie cafes had proper salads that could happily be a sustaining main course option. These days it’s often some world-weary-looking salad leaves and a half-heartwd drizzle of balsamic goo.

I was delighted to find these in a charity shop this week. Some of the recipes are definitely a bit dated now but it's great to see a variety of proper vegetarian recipes rather than everything being butternut squash, goats' cheese or vegan

My mum loves Cranks food and other vegetarian food and a lot of her staple recipes are a curried lentil pie and a bean stew, both Cranks recipes. They’re quite time intensive though.

My favourite classic are the Rose Elliot and Sarah Brown. Both pretty UFP free and pulse heavy.

I've had a weird craving for Sosmix lately so I had a search online earlier - it's so expensive now! Only one place sells it too

I can buy sosmix in local health food shops in plain cellophane bags. I think they must split the big ones.

I think it's because they are independent, where I lived before there was only holland and barret.

I'd like it if my local wholefood shop did that. I buy it in big bags online from Alternative Stores in Sheffield.

Love this thread!

I'm vegan but feel a similar hankering for potatoes and wholemeal pastry based dishes!
The book One Pot, Pan, Planet by Anna Jones has some nice hearty recipes. For instance, there's a parsnip bake, saag aloo Shepherds pie, rosti etc. The recipes make it very easy to sub for vegan or veggie requirements.

I've been looking through a Delia book and there's a recipe for slow cooked caramelised shallots that I'm going to make this week to go with sausages and mash.
Also planning on a few wholemeal galletes. My faves are leek and potato, and roasted mashed butternut squash.
I like to do these with greens and potatoes cubed and roasted with loads of dried rosemary. Also sometimes roast half a lemon in the tray to squeeze on the potatoes before serving.

I'm very inspired by all the extravagant side salads and now feel there's a whole section of my meals missing!

@UpOnTheHousetop I've never come across savoury galettes before but just googled for a recipe for a leek & potato version. I really like the look of it - the recipe suggested ground up nuts in the pastry. Do you do that? What cheese do you use?

For those asking about wholemeal olive oil pastry, this works well,

300g plain wholemeal flour
4 tbls olive oil
6-8 tbls cold water
1/2 sea salt

Very simple and tasty

@MissMarplesNiece Ground nuts in the pastry sounds lovely! I'm going to try that!
I'm vegan so I don't put any cheese in so for extra flavour in the potato and leek galette I grate in a generous amount of nutmeg, a dallop of wholegrain mustard, or sprinkle Nigella seeds over the top.

I should think most cheese would work well though!

The nostalgic theme of this thread is reminding me of the baked bean pie we used get given as kids in the 80s/90s.
It was just a few tins of baked beans topped with a layer of mash then grated cheese and baked in the oven.
Very of it's time!! 🤣

Has anyone mentioned Cranks’ Creamy Leek Croustade? Still a fave in this house, as is the Leek and Cheese Flan.

I recently bought a second hand Cranks recipe book as mine had fallen to pieces. I thought it had been abridged as it was so much thinner than mine. Turns out my pages were all soggy and dimpled with decades of splashes!

Hendersons has reopened! It's lovely. A must even for meat eaters in Edinburgh.

Thank you for sparking up this thread again, it's brilliant.
Not a veggie cookbook but today I made Delia Smith's minestrone recipe from my very old cookbook. (It is literally falling apart, I'll have to take steps.)
Anyway, twas delicious, I ditched the bacon and added a tin of cannellini beans and some courgettes.

Glad I stumbled across this thread. I became veggie in 1986. While I do like some meat substitutes this thread has inspired me to dig out some of my old recipe books for some inspiration.

This is a fab thread!

yum!!!

I use smoked paprika in minestrone - gives that smokey undertone for which bacon is used in meat recipes.