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| The Greatest Ever Vegetarian Cookbook (ed. Nicola Graimes, Lorenz Publishing, 1999) |
Because I’ve kept going back to the same books over and over
again in the last couple of months of this experiment, I thought I’d have more
of a delve on my shelves for new recipes.
I don’t have a huge number of
cookbooks – not compared to other types of books anyway. I love to get them as
presents and I always throw myself into new ones, but I tend to fall out of
love with them quite quickly and then resent the room they take up on my
shelves if I only use one or two recipes (or none!) from them. The ones I come back to
regularly? The Nigella Lawsons, the Delia Smiths, the Reader’s Digest Cookery Year that we used to have two
copies of because Robert and I both got it from our mothers when we were first
cooking for ourselves.
What I turned up from my shelves was this huge volume called The Greatest
Ever Vegetarian Cookbook (ed.
Nicola Graimes). I can’t imagine how it has survived the regular cull because I’m
sure I’ve never cooked anything out of it. I remember exactly how I came to
have it though. My father gave it to me. He was old-school about food. He
thought a meal with no meat involved was some kind of odd diet fad and that the
fact that we quite often presented him with meatless meals meant that we were
grow-your-own-hair-shirt hippies. This, despite the fact that just as often we’d bring some kind of roast beast to the table. Anyway, my dad did love to buy
things, and my guess is he got The Greatest Ever Vegetarian Cookbook at
one of those book distributors that comes around offices.
And the thing is this, although the cookbooks that make it
to the bestsellers lists are the ones plastered with one cook’s name, these
workaday cookbooks can be the truly valuable ones. They’re put together by
teams of food writers and home economists, stripped of the ego of the culinary
celebrity. It’s recipes and food information and that’s it. Of course, I do
like a bit of culinary celebrity now and then – who doesn’t want to live
as Nigella Lawson for a little while, all twinkly fairy lights and
dashing to a little deli in a taxi before supper with friends and then up again
in the middle of the night to sneak the leftovers. But in the end, food’s about
information and recipes, isn’t it?
And so to The Greatest
Ever Vegetarian Cookbook. This week we’ve had a puree of lentils
with baked eggs which was scrummy even though I had to phone home to say put
mine in the oven and then I took too long to come so my egg wasn’t runny
enough. However, all credit to the recipe – it worked brilliantly, was simple
and tasty and I wouldn’t have thought of doing it.
Then on Friday we had beetroot, mushroom and potato gratin.
Minus points for using every saucepan we own, but apart from that nothing but
plus points. Creamy mashed potatoes with dill forming a bed for beetroot in a
creamy sauce with caraway and topped with mushrooms fried until they were
crisp and delicious. Could have done with twice as many mushroom and more potatoes, but apart
from that tick, tick, tick, we’ll be having that one again.
The only failure was a vegetable Kashmiri which was just
really rather boring and bland. To be honest I’m not entirely sure why I picked
this recipe. I’d have been better off looking for Indian food in an
Indian cookery books.
Anyway, two to add to the repertoire out of one book that
has sat on my shelves for the best part of twenty years. That’s a pretty good score
Thanks Dad. I think you’d have liked the beetroot one (maybe
with a nice lamb chop on the side!).
You can find the complete menu from week ten here.
Claire Watts and her family are cooking vegetarian for a year. You can find out why - and why 'cooking vegetarian' doesn't always necessarily mean 'eating vegetarian' here.
Claire Watts writes and edits books for children.
She's currently working on making something beautiful with fairy tales.
Find out about her Snippets project and how you can help on her Patreon page.
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