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.

I know that Homity Pie has been mentioned before, but this week I made the Riverford version . I can't remember how the Cranks one tasted, but this is a good recipe, and I liked it even better cold.

Thanks that’s a good recipe website!

Oh gosh I love Homity Pie. I think the Cranks one omits apple, with or without it tastes wonderful. I think we’ve somehow got scared of pastry, nobody makes it and it’s hard to find in a restaurant. But there’s nothing nicer than a quiche/flan/tart, of which is Homity Pie is essentially a hearty version.

Pastry is really easy. I pre-cook the base in the microwave, which I learnt from a cookbook. I could check but I think it was Sarah Brown and the recipe was quiche.

My pastry radically improved when I started using the Magimix instead of my hands.

It’s great everyone is different because I’m better with my hands than food processor.

It’s a skill I admire in others but don’t have. Too heavy handed I think.

My gran (born 1908) had some vegetarian recipes as her mother didn't eat meat. As far as I know they were never written down and were heavily reliant on cheese. One was made as if it was a cottage pie, but with a lentil filling made with red lentils, onion and a good amount of lemon juice. She put cheddar in the mash too. Then there was cauliflower pie, which was boiled cauliflower then mashed with grated cheese and seasoned. Sprinkle with more grated cheese and finish under the grill. She made pasties too, the filling was mash potato with grated cheese and a beaten egg, well seasoned and shortcrust pastry (always with lard and butter). They are all really tasty and I still make them. Cheese and potato pie is another one, and potato scones. Gran came from rural Wiltshire farm labouring stock and she said meals without meat were really common in her parents' childhood, but meat was more affordable for many by the 1900s.

Can you get vegi lard?

Trex? https://familybaking.co.uk/about-trex/ Made of vegetable oils.

Please can someone make me Red Dragon Pie for my tea? I used to eat it in a Vegetarian Restaurant many moons ago and I really fancy eating it tonight.

@CadyEastman , is that a Welsh pie?
Red Dragon Pie (Vegan) - Prue Leith
Sarah Brown's Red Dragon Pie - Shoestring Cottage

We had a long chat about Red Dragon Pie a long way back in this thread. I must make it again soon.

@sashh , lard by definition is of pig origin 🐖. Trex is a vegetarian fat. I use butter for pastry.

(You probably knew that but many people don't.)

@IckyIck

I'm a meat eater but I have vegan and vegi relatives so I am always interested in what you can get in a vegi / vegan version.

And for someone born in1908 cheese was the real deal, made with rennet !
I think non-meat eating in those circumstances was because of cost, not a choice.

@sashh , there are vege/vegan substitutes for all sorts of things.
Ones that spring to mind are things like suet, fish sauce, oyster sauce, worcestershire sauce, ...

Cooking Substitutions | Naturally Vegetarians
Common Ingredient Substitutions for Vegetarian/Vegan Diets
PlainSubstitute — Ingredient Substitution Guide
...

Not all of them are substitutes IMO but worth a try.
The main thing is to be aware that something might not be vege/vegan.

Eating at someone's house, you might be fed something containing an ingredient that you'd avoid because the host might not realise that oyster sauce, bovril or lard was not suitable.

I'd be all right at yours because your dolphins are creme fraiche ones.

I try to eat things that are food that happens to be vegetarian not "vegetarian food". By "vegetarian food" I mean the food that omnivores think of as vegetarian, and it's the food that's often the vege option when you go to a restaurant.
The food that happens to be vegetarian would be something like a salad and hummus wrap or a baked potato with baked beans or bean chilli, or veg curry/dahl with rice.

Restaurant menus seem to offer: mushroom or butternut squash dish (usually risotto), or a dish with beetroot, goat's cheese, or caramelised onion, usually a tart, or it might be a dish with no protein element.

That was probably me , I’m obsessed with it at the moment.

Yes, I have this one after interrogating our local veggie cafe who said that 90% of their dishes were from it.
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