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?

Had forgotten about that Sarah Brown book it was great. Also recommend Rose Eliot.

BTW, I know the original Hendersons in Edinburgh shut during Covid, but a new version opened by I think the original owner's grandson is now open and serves quite delicious but also fairly traditional veggie food.

On the 8th day cafe on Oxford Road in Manchester used to have a recipe section on their website that was really useful

I really enjoyed the Sarah brown books. The buckwheat roast in the book I have was great.

I also have an old King's Pantry book, a vegetarian restaurant in Cambridge. My parent's knew the owner through goat keeping I think!

I have a few great ones that you can pick up second hand for pennies - some already mentioned like Moosewood but my other two that I use often are:

Vegetarian Planet by Didi Emmons - £3.50 used

New Vegetarian cooking for everyone by Deborah Madison - £4.99 on kindle

If anyone has the ckbk app, Madison's cookbook "The Savoury Way" is on there in full as well - I don't know that book but at a glance it looks tres old-school (in the best way!)

They also have another called The New Vegetarian by Colin Spencer from 1986 that looks very promising - he was a vegetarian columnist for the Guardian from 1980-1994.

I also love old-style veggie recipes, however love a poke-bowl style veggie dish too

My old school books are the Vegetarian Society ones which I use all the time. Quite fancy a veggie quiche now!

@3ormorecharacters my mum and I were reminiscing about sosmix only the other day - you can still get it!

alternativestores.com/products/original-sosmix-vegan-sausage-mix-1kg-bag

Alongside Sosmix, this was another staple!

Happy memories of sosmix and vege-burger mix. I must admit to still treating myself to the odd tube or Tartex now and then.
https://www.healthpharm.co.uk/products/herbs-garlic-tube-200g-tx-315?variant=38399840007&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiArfauBhApEiwAeoB7qE8To5TnfyBP-ITL-5ZFrDKN_Fp9nC2rnIynDrVDhGG28c_jIBaOoRoCgYEQAvD_BwE

I,ve got an old veggie book with George Bernard Shaw's recipes in it. This was written years before we had all the lovely stuff from abroad, so it is really things like your great grandmother would cook, quite basic stuff, maybe the sort of thing old boarding schools would serve up to little boys.

I try to have a couple of bean/ pulse dishes each week. My favourites are:
Lentil loaf - cooked red lentils mixed with cooked onions, grated carrot, cheese, well seasoned and bound with egg & baked.
Chickpea loaf - same as above using mashed up, cooked chickpeas
Lentil cottage pie - mix made of red lentils and veg and tomatoes, topped with either mash or cheese scones
Kidney bean casserole - from a Sarah Brown book, iirc. A sort of bean chilli
Butterbean (or any white beans) casserole - root veg and beans cooked in casserole with cider, with scones or dumplings
Kidney beans and mushrooms made into burgers and served on bap.
Red lentils daal with rice.

I love red lentils.

DH also makes lovely burger/rissoles out of tinned green lentils - haven't had them for ages, will remind him to make some soon. Also, red lentils "croquettes" made from cooked red lentils mixed with breadcrumbs, peanut butter and some cheese.

I used to make a kind of red lentil Bolognese, there was no subtlety to it - pure heavenly tomato and mushroom and lentil stodge. I think that was Cranks...

@Xiaoxiong

I had the Colin Spencer book. Mum and I tried to make the risotto. Despite having wine and stock in it , it was incredibly dry!

@shearwater2

I could eat that whole damn pie!

I love all these ideas. Kind of like a food equivalent of sandals and hessian. I'm planning a cheese and chickpea loaf for dinner tonight now I've been reminded of them.

Can I just say thank you OP for this thread! So many childhood favourites I'd forgotten all about and new things to try too!

My poor committed carnivore DH isn't going to know what's hit him 😅

I'm so pleased this thread has gone down well.
If anyone has any photos to share of recipes they cook inspired by this please add them.
I'm going to try to make a few extra things,
Im so tempted to buy some older style recipe books.

Homity pie on the menu this week thanks to this thread

I have the Cranks cookbook and the Rose Elliott New Complete Vegetarian book with most of her recipes in if anyone needs any recipe help.

Claudia Roden’s Boiled Carrot Salad. Tastes so good, sounds so dull.

Lentil shepherd’s pie with Marmite gravy.

Cheese and onion pie.

Stuffed peppers

Stuffed cabbage stuffed with rice, lentils, herbs, and cooked in a tomato sauce.

Hot beetroot with onion sauce, usually served with cheese pie and boiled potatoes.

Cheese pudding is nice, very comforting, and old fashioned…my mother in law used to make it in the sixties. There’s plenty of recipes online I see.
My Mum in the 70s and 80s used to make a “savoury bean bake” which was essentially a few tins of different beans/pulses covered with savoury crumble mix, and baked. So filling. My kids love it. I add oats to the crumble mix, herbs etc.

ohh what a lovely thread! I have a few Rose Elliot books and they have some lovely recipes in. I love the gnocchi made with semolina and cheddar and then grilled.
I once went to a Cranks restaurant and was blown away with the food- I'd never see owt like it as a lass growing in in N.E England in 60s/70s. I find it really hard to find good vegetarian food nowadays and I say that as a carnivore...its all vegan fakey crap

I recall making a lasagne I found in a (I think...) British Heart foundation recipe for courgette, continental lentil and mushroom lasagne and it was so delicious but I've never been able to find the recipe again

I love this thread. I very much miss Beatroot, the vegetarian cafe in Berwick St that was a victim a few years ago of the Crossrail mall-ification of Soho.