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?

Aduki beans are very hard to find these days I use black beans instead for a good colour. I also use tinned.

Sosmix! I loved that stuff.
Had a yen for it in lockdown and was sooo sad to see it has disappeared.
After eating slabs of unmarinated tofu, it was a revelation. We used to make lovely veggie burgers with it.
Don't know what magic catnip flavourings they put in it, but everything else pales in comparison 😩
Bring back Sosmix, Sosmix-making people! 🙏

Nice thread OP. Really fancy a wholemeal quiche with a mung bean salad right now!
😋

@CaptainMyCaptain Ordered organic aduki beans from wholefoods on line on a friend’s recommendation. Tis’ not red dragon pie without the aduki beans.

The food described on this thread is what got me into vegetarianism in the 80s. I think we’ve now maybe done to death the trendy iterations of ‘dirty vegan’ food and so on - it’s time for a revival of good healthy and wholesome fare.

I have the Cranks, Moosewood and Sarah Brown books on the kitchen shelf - thinking it’s time to dust them off and start cooking. I do tweak ingredients where there are now better versions of something - or just more variety. Back in the day, ‘curry powder’ was your only spice option unless you had an asian supermarket nearby (we didn’t). Now, I can substitute the generic spice blends with my own.

You can get aduki beans in Ocado, but only tinned. For dried beans, I find wholefood shops are best, and also any supermarket or local Turkish/Cypriot/similar shop that caters to a Middle Eastern customer base.

This thread has been great. Currently planning to make a lentil moussaka at the weekend, using brown lentils, as I find I have a big bag of them. I may well move on to wholemeal pastry and some sort of pie or quiche next week! The cashew and parsnip loaf linked above is scheduled in for a week on Sunday.

I also loved Sosmix. It looks like it was bought out by a company [Symington foods] who then stopped making it. I used to save my college grant and go to a health food shop and buy one packet every now and then as my treat.

I just found a place that does it, [Alternative foods] but it has palm oil in it meaning it won't be the original recipe.

My mum makes this still! She uses sunflower seeds

You're thinking of Lentil Wedges from the Cranks book. We still make it in our family but not the breadcrumbs and add a tsp of marmite to the mix for extra flavour. We all love it, it's great hot or cold with a baked potato, steamed veggies & chutney.

Re aduki beans. I don't do online shopping so don't use Ocado and there isn't a Waitrose near me. They used to have tinned ones in Tesco but don't seem to now. I usually shop in Sainsbury's and they haven't sold tinned or dried for years. I've tried the only Health Food shop in town with no luck. I don't live in a city. If I do come across any I'll stock up because they're lovely.

Can't believe I gave away my Rose Elliot book, what an eejit! Thoroughly enjoying this conversation.

I lived from this book aged 19-30 (a long long time ago)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vegetarian-Epicure-Penguin-Handbooks/dp/0140462015

Love the Rose Elliott books, still have them! This was also a favourite!

Made a hearty mushroom and green lentil stew thus week, with onions, garlic, celery, sweet potatoes and big flat mushrooms. Flavoured with Lea and Perrins, marmite and Marigold. Side order of grated carrot and chia seeds dressed with lemon juice .
I must have felt this thread coming!

This was our meal at Good Earth.
( hopefully you can see that photo)
Sadly we aren't near Leicester to go there enough.

The main meals came with some crusty bread and butter and a random quarter of tomato. I had bean bake and DH mushroom stroganoff. DH and I shared a salad plate.

I'm so pleased this thread has inspired!
I also gave away my more old style cook books years ago
I spent about £25 on a shiny new Persian vegetarian cookbook last month and it's nowhere near as inspiring as reading all the ideas in this thread.
I'm going off to EBay to see what I can see.

Tesco have aduki beans.

Or just use kidney or black beans. I used black eyed beans last night, they were also nice.

Inspired by this thread I made a cheesy roasted veg bake with cauliflower, black eyed beans, spinach and butternut squash. And have also brought some to work for my lunch.

Goodness that takes me back to Leicester in the 80s! I used to love the Good Earth. So pleased it’s still going

I was reading the slimming advice in the back of Vegetarian Grub on a Grant and while the 'low fat' bit seems a little outdated, she also says to avoid many of what we could call now UPFs, so it is pretty sound.

I actually find that I don't eat much fat when I am watching my diet and put all my food into Nutracheck, without consciously avoiding it, and definitely eating things like avocado, cheese, oil and butter.

Mind blown! I've believed that the lamb stuffing was the original since 19*#! I must have read it in a cookery book somewhere, because I didn't know enough about it then to make it up as a recipe 😁

I got a lovely dip from Sainsbury's last week - Odysea Ajvar. Roasted red peppers and aubergine, slightly spicy, great with houmous.

I used to make that winter veggie crumble. So delicious. It's decades since I've made one. I usually leave the cooking to DH but I'm tempted now.

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.

@C8H10N4O2 LOL. DH says very similar about Ottolenghi. He was so enthusiastic at first but he's getting pissed off about the endless faffy stages and arcane ingredients just to produce something which tastes okay but not that different from one-pan roasting with readily available spice mixes.

I recommend this one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vegetarian-Athletes-Cookbook-Delicious-Recipes/dp/1472923014

Easy recipes, store cupboard ingredients and balanced meals with plenty of protein.

I had one Yotam cook book and thought the recipes look lovely but I'd rather have someone else make them for me in a restaurant! And lots were basically side dishes for meat or fish, and had no protein in them.

If you are ever in Surrey then you should try the Riverside Vegetaria in Kingston. It says it's been going since 1989 but the vibe much older! Although I wonder if they are under new ownership as their menu online includes tofu teriyaki and last time I went their chalkboard menu had about 20 choices of nothing spicier than a lentil.

Another one of my old faves is this one.

Opens up to this page which I remember cooking regularly yonks ago. I might buy a cauli today and remake it at the weekend.

There is something special about adzuki beans though and well worth chasing up and hunting down. The flavour and smell is unique and they are very nourishing.
I found two bags in a health food shop about a hundred miles from home, wrapped in compostable packaging, will try and track down same brand online.
Tesco's used to be a reliable tinned source, but not any more, at least not in my local mega Tesco's the size of an airport!

Thanks@GolfForBrains ! I remember the Riverside Vegetaria well, very fond memories! Lovely restaurant with views of the river, so glad it is still thriving! Next time I'm in the area will have a meal there.