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?

I have the original Cranks book and the Entertaining Cranks. They are battered and well used. I've made the nut roast from there for almost every Christmas for the last 30 years. But I still have the Sarah Brown book as well. We also make a nice parsnip roulade -possibly that's a Delia Xmas recipe.

I found the Moosewood book almost impossible to use and in the end gave it away. I would have liked to have visited the restaurant though.

@Talipesmum
i used to make cheese and rice regularly !

I remember Sosmix - you had to buy it from the health food stores I think!

I eat loads of lentils and beans.
we grew up on “The Paupers cookbook” not vegetarian but there must have been a few veggie recipes in there

Cheese Pie made with flaky pastry

The pity of it is that younger generations do believe that eating lentils and beans will somehow mark them out as poor. And that they’re arduous to cook. So they’d much rather buy tiny quantities of UPF with a fancy name.

I bought my nibling a 21st century vegetarian cookbook to take to university. Flicking through, I didn’t recognise half the ingredients in it.

Just three words and I'm transported to 80's (student) vegetarian heaven.....

Creamy Leek Croustade!

Cranks I think.

Absolutely loved Rose Elliot's writing, she made every recipe sound so wholesome and approachable. And at then end of so many...'serve with a simple green salad, some brown rice or a few new potatoes!'

I used to think 'I could do that!', though I rarely did!

You are my people! This is my absolute favourite sort of food. I have all my Rose Elliot, Cranks and Sarah Brown books from the 90s. I think my best friend from school who turned veggie at the same time as me had a Moosewood one. I remember it saying something like ‘stirfry with abandon’ and I remember it regularly when stirfrying.
I really love the brazil nut fritters and lentil loaf by Rose Elliot, the kidney bean pie by Sarah Brown and the brown rice risotto by Cranks and have them really regularly.

That’s the name I was trying to remember - the pauper’s cookbook! Pretty sure we had a good few from there as well.

Imam Bayildi is always veggie and divine - aubergines, tomatoes, onions and green peppers. Its one of my favourite dishes. There is a lamb mince stuffed aubergine dish - could that be the one you are thinking of?

This reminds me of another author from that era - Arto der Haroutunian, still the best writer on classic Arab food and writing long before Middle Eastern food became fashionable. His books have been reprinted many times and have many veggie recipes as well as some specific veggie books. If you see any second hand snap them up - you won't regret it. The recipes are often much more practical than the current trend of three million ingredients including several only available when the moon is on the wax in a back street in cairo.

Also Sarah Brown's chilli bean casserole - another family favourite. https://craigloftus.net/chilli-bean-casserole

What a lovely thread! I’ve been missing the trad’ vegetarian cafes of my youth so much lately - I think it’s a longing for a simpler way of life (and quite possibly for hessian lampshades 😆). I actually got rather emotional recalling red dragon pie and braised red cabbage - so much so that I decided to make it..and couldn’t find aduki beans in the shops so improvised with borlotti beans. It was great! The veggie cafe is a sadly declining thing. Willow in Totnes was one of the last bastions of the pine table, hefty salad-vending philosophy, and I think it’s now sadly closed. I also recall Mother Nature in Stroud and Down To Earth in Gloucester market (child of the West country and the 1980s).

Yes, the cheese and parsnip roulade is from Delia Smith's Christmas. Recipe on her website. It's delicious hot or cold.

I've still got my copy. Will look through it tomorrow.

I have the Sarah Brown book somewhere. My first cookery book. I've also got Delia's Vegetarian collection which is looking a bit old-fashioned too.

OP, it's no longer in print but I have a copy of The Vegan Health Plan by Amanda Sweet which is full of the kind of solid veggie fare that you want. I've just opened it at random and found Lentil, Parsnip and Walnut roast and Winter Vegetable Crumble. It's also full of useful info on nutrition and how to prep and use more unusual vegetables.

The recipes are often much more practical than the current trend of three million ingredients including several only available when the moon is on the wax in a back street in cairo.

I keep getting Ottolenghi out and reading through the long, long list of increasingly exotic ingredients. Then I put the book away and make this BBC Good Food nut loaf
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/nut-loaf
Unusually for a nut loaf it has eggs and cheese in it — but it's the best. I took one with us when we went to the in-laws for Christmas lunch and after the meat-eaters had made fun of it they tried it and then each took a hefty slice.

Me too.

Vegetarian food shouldn't include fake meat. I don't even like the idea of fake meat. I think it's made from some awful sounding chemicals...and weird proteins grown on laboratories. 🤢

Another fav book of mine from the 90s - fantastic veggie recipes

FOOD FROM THE PLACE BELOW amzn.eu/d/hFIzwlU

The Place Below! Wow,I loved it there.

I have just recalled I bought this book (In a bookshop while on holiday in Rome of all places). I plan to dig it out and start cooking hard from it. As I recall it has a lovely potato and sweetcorn chowder in it that used to be a staple in our house. I'm not vegetarian- but DH is. He'd be quite delighted if I came over to the light side.

https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/linda-mccartney/linda-s-kitchen/9780316858618?cq_src=google_ads&cq_cmp=18059580451&cq_con=&cq_med=pla&cq_plac=&cq_net=x&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-fGJyPjPhAMVNo9QBh3ySAeoEAQYECABEgLq3PD_BwE#GOR001177045

God that looks good.

I was just about to say the same. Sarah Brown is classic 80s wholemeal/ lentil cooking. £3.50 in World of Books.

I’m placemarking on this lovely thread.

I've still got that although I haven't used it for a while. I must have a flick through.