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?

This one? My DC used to absolutely love this and it does still work quite well with other pulses so long as they are small and hold their shape.

https://www.shoestringcottage.com/sarah-browns-red-dragon-pie/

I don’t think any of Brown’s books are published as ebooks but a great many of the recipes are online - she was hugely popular but seems to have disappeared (or possibly just moved onto other things - I don’t think she has published since having DC).

@Aintgointogoa @C8H10N4O2 Aah, red dragon pie. I loved this as a child in the 80s and even remember making it at school in Home Ec when everyone else was doing shepherds pie - my teacher asked for the recipe. My mum used to / still does make aduki bean soup too.

I still make this (and quite a few other “old” veggie recipes) when any of the DC are at home. They have all inveigled their OHs into the joys of red dragon pie, tomato pie (from the Rose Elliot book) and are now starting to foist them on the next generation 😁

Sarah Browns chilli bean casserole (with bulgar wheat) was also incredibly popular with visiting meat eaters - another hearty dish which can be made with seasonal veg and spiced up or down to taste.

@C8H10N4O2 @southchinasea Yes ! That one ! Delicious and a firm favourite in our little clan back in the day. I have sourced aduki beans on an online store here so they will be winging their way to me soon !
Maybe I'll make an occasion out of it and have some friends round to convince them to try veggie 🤭 Beans feature heavily in the national cuisine anyway (cheap protein and can be soooo tasty)

I wonder what became of Sarah Brown? The internet came too late to pin her down. Hopefully she’s living a happy and healthy life somewhere lovely.

That layered nut roast has graced many a table, I hope she knew how popular her recipe was.

Her last book was about healthy veg eating in pregnancy and early childhood and I remember the promotion rounds - she had married a well known British climber. It sticks in my memory because she was having DC and publishing that book about the same time as I was having DC.

Then she just disappeared. I looked for more books by her in later years but never heard of her again. I don’t know if she was still Sarah Brown or changed her name but perhaps she made enough from the TV/books to be settled happily and just changed direction. Or maybe she still runs cookery schools somewhere and is still evangelising the aduki beans.