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?

One of the things I find makes food taste like the old days is using actual herbs.

Oh I love this kind of cooking, I bought the food for thought cookbook and love it. Cranks is fabulous too

Vegetarian Grub on a Grant! I still have it. God I love a bit of vegetarian stodge.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vegetarian-Grub-Grant-Cas-Clarke/dp/0747252041

I bought DD1 Mean Beans for her to take to university as it has more recipes in - and my copy of VGOG is falling apart.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mean-Beans-Cheap-Vegetarian-Cooking/dp/074724233X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=LGEOZ0XNIWDI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DJJjQY2rbj9QnzvIBr6huQ.onhLbGgLqk7EcH3-spQbX94yB3HWvikFqkYehoaZkwo&dib_tag=se&keywords=Mean+beanz+cas+clarke&qid=1709035683&s=books&sprefix=mean+beanz+cas+clarke%2Cstripbooks%2C64&sr=1-1

My parents are total hippies (plus we were poor!) so although we weren't actually veggie this is the kind of stuff I grew up on 😊

Not sure of actual recipes but just some ideas:

Lentil pie with wholemeal pastry
Bean, lentil or chickpea burgers (mash whatever pulses you choose and add grated carrot, finely diced onion, peas, some flour and egg to desired consistency, shape and fry - I still make these often!). Goes great either as an actual burger in a bunch or with veg and mash.
Loads of soups - hearty root veg, leek and potato, minestrone, mushroom, lentil, carrot and coriander (very exotic at the time ha) with homemade brown bread if you can be arsed
Lentil cottage pie
Bean and veg casserole or stew with dumplings (with or without cheese)
Mum used to make a veg and egg pie that was basically a quiche but with a top crust as well - could just leave that off to be a bit healthier!
Nut roast (obviously!
A kind of cheese, spinach, potato and egg bake with a brown breadcrumb crust
Glamorgan sausages! I'd forgotten these, so simple yet soooo good! Need some veggies with them to balance the fact that they are basically cheese bread and egg though 😅

We also spent a lot of time in Europe and Morocco in our bus (we were genuine hippies haha) so had quite a bit of food influence from there too -
Spanish omelette/tortilla de patatas
All kinds of veggie tagines and stews with chickpeas and couscous
Veggie paella
Veggie tapas (tbh my mum wasn't great at this 😅 but if you're good with herbs and spices there are loads of options!)

I also quite like using the dehydrated soya chunks/mince in dishes like chilli and stews rather than quorn and frozen soya mince etc, I like the consistency and the way they soak up the flavour so nicely. Can't recall if my mum cooked with these but I like them as an alternative to all the ready made stuff you can buy these days.

The Cranks recipe book! It's a classic.

There's a cafe near me that basically has stayed in the 70s for vegetarian food, no Ottolenghi tomfoolery, no siree. I love their homity pie and grated carrot and kidney bean salad.

This goes down very well at home:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/cheeseandonionpie_89625

The pasty is amazing. You can get veggie "parmesan" in Sainsbury's which is good.

Mildred's is now vegan 🙄

The Gate is almost entirely vegan too now

It's getting harder to find decent vegetarian food

It is hard, there is so much fake meat crap it was hard to even find a beanburger in the supermarket the other day.

Homity Pie 🤤

Love the thread idea!

my aunt was vegetarian when I was growing up in the 70s. Her standard salad was grated carrot, sultanas, and some sort of seed tossed in orange juice. Hated it at the time but love it now! I usually use pine nuts but not sure what she used.

Red Dragon Pie from the Sarah Brown book is a regular favourite. Also various vegetables in a Gado Gado sauce.

I was veggie in the 80's, and loved the Bean Book. I am now inspired to make the black eyed beans with orange dish from there which I adored and had forgotten about till this thread

I always love a cauliflower cheese, nice and strong. Breadcrumbs and cheese toppings. New spuds and peas. Agree with you about the veganism. I don't like fake meat....used to love Glamorgan sausages,non of the shops now do them. Found you can get them from "BRAKES", but a minimum spend of £100. I do like the look of some of these recipe books.

I'm really sad that veggie food with dairy and eggs has more or less gone, replaced with vegan. Why can't pubs etc do both? I'm sick of bloody noodle bowls with disgusting tahini sauce (I hate sesame, it tastes bitter) and seafuckingweed (another vomititious ingredient). Gimme a decent chunk of veg quiche, a tasty crunchy salad and some new potatoes or chips. Mmmmmm.

Love this thread! Thanks OP. You've inspired me to try some new things. I miss a good veggie lasagne at restaurants. Sadly my dc don't like it but I love it. Rose Elliott's French style peas are amazing.

I do love old-fashioned veggie food (I have fond memories of the old Rainbow Cafe in Cambridge, and I have a much-loved copy of the Moosewood Cookbook), but can we get over the idea that vegan food is all fake meat? Just because many restaurants (especially chain ones) are lazy and just want to chuck a burger at the vegans doesn't mean that all vegan food is full of processed crap - quite the opposite. It makes as much sense as the old 'veggie food is all rabbit food' rubbish that vegetarians used to be told.

@BabCNesbitt I agree. Some vegan food is delicious and not fake meat - e.g. falafel

I just don't understand why even long standing vegetarian restaurants have stopped serving eggs/dairy

I'm nearly 50 and have been veggie since I was 12. I totally agree with the people who say they hate fake meat. A lot of restaurant offerings are so disappointing these days! I also like Sarah Brown and Cranks' homity pie.

Hopefully they realised that the egg and dairy industries are just as cruel as, if not more than,
the meat industries and changed their menus to reflect their values!

I turned vege at the age of 12 (1979). We had loads of vege cook books but Rose Elliott was my favourite.

We did occasionally have soy meat but mainly pulses. It was so much healthier than the fake meat that’s everywhere now.

Favourite recipes:
Pan Haggerty
Lentil bake
Mushroom croustade
Vegetarian lasagne
Bean burgers
Delia’s thick onion tart
Vegetable curry which always had an apple and raisins in it!

It was hard eating out as a vege at first, gradually improving from an omelette, or the vegetables with a lump of cheese. Then came the era of the frozen lasagne. Now, we play vege bingo - butternut squash, sweet potato, goats cheese or halloumi and fake meat burger at extortionate prices.

DH is vegetarian and we play veggie bingo too. So so so tired of goats cheese and onion tart and anything with sweet potato in it.

He had a lovely rigatoni though last week which had fresh tomatos, spinach, onion, peppers and cream in it. Best thing he has eaten for ages according to DH. And simple too.

You can't beat Cranks! I love their lentil and cheese wedges - reminds me of my amazing mum who suddenly had to learn a whole new way of cooking for me when I went veggie at 11 back in the 80s and there was very little available other than Sosmix and dehydrated soya chunks.

Oh- sorry OP- just realised I did not answer your question.

I make a really nice hot or cold lentil salad.
-green lentils
-feta cheese
-celery
-cherry tomatos
-chilli flakes
-lemon juice
-olive oil
-crushed nuts
-large handful each of parsley and coriander diced

Not sure if it counts as 'old fashioned' I just sort of made it up but it's a brilliant lunch or side dish IMO.

My parents have been veggie since the 70s and my mum is a brilliant at cooking hearty old school vegetarian food. Rose Elliot was her first and most enduring inspiration. The Red Dragon Pie mentioned above is also a family favourite.

A special shout out to Sosmix which was my favourite food as a child but sadly seems to.habe vanished from the shelves. I miss it so much!

I love anything with little puy lentils - I make a delightfully boring lentil side dish with soffrito/mirepoix, garlic, puy lentils, a splash of vermouth, bay, thyme, and good veg stock - I like t hhe Kallo one. I occasionally use chicken stock too as I'm.not actually veggie. It goes a pleasingly dull stodgy brown but is just absolutely delicious.

Puy lentil salad as you describe above is definitely a much classier use for them 😁

I remember the only options on the menu of those quite traditional pub I used to work in back in the 1990s being broccoli crumble (basically just broc, cheese and breadcrumbs) or vegetable tagliatelle, with the veg from the Sunday roasts - so often just sprouts, carrots and more cream...

Delia does a good Mediterranean veggie lasagne.