The vegetarian thing

"Vegetarian food has become fashionable. No longer are you considered the odd one out if you request a meal without meat. Big meat eaters are dwindling in number and, like smokers, finding themselves somewhat out of fashion."

Charmaine Solomon

And this statement from the introduction to my 'first recipe' book was written way back in 1990. It's even truer today. Let alone vegan - which deserves another post all to itself.

I guess, being Asian, a book on vegetarian food was not a complete surprise from Charmaine Solomon, and though this book is divided into half Western and half Asian, as she says in her introduction, with respect to Asian vegetarian food,

"These cultures have depended on meatless meals for centuries, and it would be impossible, in a book that aims to present the whole gamut of vegetarian cooking, not to draw on such a rich source."

Maybe the bigger surprise is that half the book is Western. She doesn't mention Middle-eastern, but since the first recipe in the book was falafel then she obviously includes it. So I guess it is considered to be 'western'. It's an interesting way to divide up the world isn't it? Western and Asian - where do Latin American and African fit in to that division I wonder? But that's an aside.

Charmaine Solomon's vegetarian book is not my only vegetarian book. I thought to go and check my others out and somewhat surprised myself at how many I actually have. I have ten in total that are purely vegetarian and another half a dozen or so that focus on vegetables, or grains but include meat and fish dishes in them. And amongst those vegetarian books is one by Robert Carrier - Gourmet Vegetarian and one from Elizabeth David - Elizabeth David on Vegetables. That last one is a bit of a cheat of course. Although the recipes are hers they have been assembled into a vegetarian collection by her devoted editor Jill Norman. She didn't write a vegetarian book herself, although she always waxed lyrical about the vegetables she found around the shores of the Mediterranean and into France and Italy. I also have one 'specialist' vegetarian book on vegetarian pasta - pasta being a term that is used here to include eastern style noodles as well as Italian ones. It's by somebody I have never heard of. I will probably come to it at some point in my 'first recipe' effort. The others are from not unexpected sources - Madhur Jaffrey - two specifically vegetarian books, including the wonderful World Vegetarian, another Indian cook - Julia Sahini and then the current promoters of vegetarianism, although they both remain steadfastl meat eaters too - Greg Malouf and Yotam Ottolenghi. And I notice that Nigel Slater's latest book is vegetarian as well. But I haven't bought that as yet. And I'm not sure that I will - maybe if it ends up on a bargain table some time.

So vegetarian is definitely a current thing - and vegetarianism has been a thing for much longer than you might think. Well actually much, much longer than you might think - hundreds of years in fact, although in the more distant past mostly limited to the religious and the slightly weird. Well that's how they were perceived anyway. And, to my surprise, as my cookbooks show, it's something that I have been thinking about for much longer than I realised. Which demonstrates, in a negative sense, that I have not actually progressed very much in a move towards vegetarianism, or even partial vegetarianism. Well maybe. We do mostly have one vegetarian meal a week, and we do seem to eat less meat these days, but this is about as far as I have come in 30 years.

Having now read the introductions to all of these books I see - well I knew anyway - that the growing number of vegetarians is basically down to us knowing more about where our food comes from and how the animals we eat are treated, concern for the environment and also knowing more about the various benefits and dangers of specific foods. "We are what we eat" is something we all now know - even those who continue to eat unhealthily. I cannot believe that anyone, in the western world anyway, does not know that eating unhealthily of fat and sugar laden foods in vast quantities will kill you. Like smoking. And yet people continue to smoke and continue to overeat all the wrong things. It's a paradox is it not that at the same time as an increasing number of people are turning to vegetarianism and veganism and other extreme so-called healthy diets - we are experiencing an obesity epidemic? I don't know whether to feel encouraged or depressed.

I actually enjoy cooking a vegetarian meal now and then. We have a few vegetarian friends and I always try to accommodate them if they come to dinner or lunch, to the extent that the rest of us eat vegetarian that day. But I think if I was doing it every day I would find it difficult. Now that I have read through all those introductions though I wonder if I am making a basic mistake which is preventing me progressing.

"For someone who is timidly approaching vegetarian food and cannot imagine what to substitute for meat, be prepared to change your perception of what constitutes a meal. There does not have to be a great, hearty serving of something to take the place of the meat you're not having. A delightful and varied platter can be composed of various kinds of vegetables prepared in different ways." Robert Carrier

And yes, indeed I do tend to take that approach - one main thing + accompaniments. Which is fine - there are things like pasta, risottos, tarts and pies, a chunky soup that admirably fulfil those requirements. But I have to admit a vegetable stew or curry doesn't really do it for me. Other than ratatouille, for some reason. I miss the meat or fish element and often spoil my determination to be vegetarian that day by, at the last minute, adding in some bacon or ham.

"Why [do] so many people have such an ambivalent relationship with vegetables: they know they should eat more of them - they want to eat more of them - but they find preparing them a bit of a bore and, more often than not, mired in meat-centric food habits. , they can't think of interesting vegetable dishes to cook. Other people worry that it just won't feel like a properly filling meal with a bit of meat on the plate." Greg and Lucy Malouf

As for making an appetising selection of different vegetable based dishes. Well that's hard work isn't it? Each dish might be easy and quick but if you are doing several that's a lot of peeling, chopping and slicing, not to mention co-ordinating the cooking so that you are not trying to actively cook three things at once. I think there's basically too much planning to do with that approach. Fun for a dinner or lunch party but not an everyday thing.

Robert Carrier offers an approach to becoming a vegetarian - though I don't think he ever did. He loved his meat and fish too much.

"Gradually, make all breakfasts and lunches plant-based meals. Then remove flesh-based dinner main courses every other day and substitute high-protein plant foods such as pulse vegetables combined with rice. Make one main course per week a pasta dish, with a vegetable sauce or added vegetables, at another meal make it a casserole of vegetables. In this way, you will be eating vegetarian before you know it." Robert Carrier

Well my breakfasts - unless presented with a luxury hotel buffet, are always minimal and vegetarian. Lunch, I confess is not. I often have sardines on toast, but yes I also often have a kind of bruschetta, or bananas in some form or another. As to dinner - actually I do think we usually have one vegetarian meal at least per week - usually a pasta or a quiche, if I can resist the temptation to add bacon anyway.

Then there's the problem of getting enough protein into you. And here Beverley Sutherland Smith made an interesting comment back in 1994.

"I have steered clear of including dishes and ingredients that have, unfortunately, given vegetarianism a bad name in some quarters - as a result you will not find recipes heavy with pulses and beans." Beverley Sutherland Smith

Times have changed here. Nowadays there is a much large variety of tinned and dried beans available, and the universality of things like hummus and falafel has meant that people are no longer as wary of beans and pulses. Indeed they are actually pretty trendy. Well I guess there's still a tinge of hippy and wholemeal to them but not so much. In the time since the 90s there has been an absolute explosion in interest in Middle-Eastern and other cuisines that employ pulses and beans as basic elements in their meals. Indeed the variety of what is on offer, and the experimentation that has gone hand in hand with this is enormous.

"How lucky we are (although unfortunately not all of us) to be living and cooking in a world that offers such a spectrum of ingredients and so many culinary heritages to draw on." Yotam Ottolenghi

"As I travel around the world, I see that we seem to be heading towards a softening of boundaries between all cuisines. In a way, this has always happened. There is no nation that has not absorbed, sometimes with ease and sometimes with great disquiet and fulmination, new products and new cooking techniques from other worlds. Mixing and matching, borrowing and lending, we are constantly enriching our cuisines. Today, this is happening at a faster pace than it did 500 years ago. We live in a new world where each of us not only knows at least a dozen other food traditions - other than the ones were were born with - but are on close and easy terms with them." Madhur Jaffrey

"Part of the fun of being a Western cook is that you may, indeed, put together anything that strikes your fancy." Madhur Jaffrey

If you are vegan though it's a whole other ball game because dairy cannot help with your protein. But as I say - veganism another day.

What I do know is that it is much, much easier to be a vegetarian these days with respect to eating out. Some of the fast food outlets - e.g. MacDonalds- have not quite got there yet, but every café, restaurant and pop-up has at least one vegetarian option. When we visited Italy around ten years ago with our vegetarian friends, they were often pushed to find a decent vegetarian option that wasn't pasta with tomato sauce or a mushroom or tomato pizza. Which was very interesting because Italy is, in many ways, supposed to be very health conscious when it comes to food - the slow food movement, the emphasis on home-cooking and small supermarkets - and yet it was very difficult for our friends - unless you cooked your own food of course. In France at the same time you could generally find at least one interesting vegetarian dish. And I think both countries have probably continued to progress on this front. Here in Australia we are way in front of them. And you don't have to go to an Indian or Middle-eastern or specialist vegetarian restaurant to get vegetarian options.

It's possible that it's a fad I suppose, but I suspect not.

"Vegetarianism has come to the West in a series of somewhat unnatural heaves, promoted not by a general belief of the masses but by individual conclusions, often reached independently. Recipe and menu development has gone on in the same ad hoc fashion." Madhur Jaffrey

One thing that all of my cookbook writers emphasised was that being vegetarian did not mean that the food would not be delicious. It would also be more interesting and seasonal too, because the variety of vegetables on offer is so much bigger than the meat or fish, and also those natural flavours can be further heightened by the array of spices and herbs on offer too. In my youth, virtually all there was was parsley and mint in herbs and nutmeg and cinnamon in spices.

And when you have the world's top chefs all seemingly moving that way, and producing gorgeous books such as Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi and New Feast by Greg and Lucy Malouf, then there's really no excuse not to give it a go. They are books aimed at non extreme vegetarians, just those who want to try vegetarian meals out now and then. And back in 1990 Charmaine Solomon was already spreading the word.

"Here is a book which doesn't go to extremes, a book anyone can enjoy cooking and eating from." Charmaine Solomon

And I was sort of listening, although I didn't really do enough about it.