Historically, not a great many people wanted to emulate vegetarians.  They were seen as cranky dinner party pests, also sentimental, moralistic, and only attractive to each other - the men with their wispy beards and sandals, the hairy women.  And their taste standards for food were low, with reliance on nut loaves and mushy pulses.  Leopold Bloom’s thoughts express the everyman view in Ulysses as, spotting a vegetarian bore on a Dublin street in 1904, ‘[h]is eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a listening woman at his side.  Coming from the vegetarian.  Only weggebobbles and fruit.  Don’t eat a beefsteak.  If you do the eyes of that cow will pursue you through all eternity.  They say it’s healthier.  Wind and watery though.  Tried it.  Keep you on the run all day’.

However… that was last century.  Now, reasons to reconsider giving up meat are inescapable and multiplying all the time.  First is the brutality of turning very sentient creatures into food through factory farming and cruel abattoir practices.  Next come energy use and pollution implications that give meat eaters a much larger carbon footprint than vegetarians - apparently a meateater with a bicycle produces more carbon than a vegetarian Hummer driver.  Then there are the dodgy practices of the meat industry highlighted with horsemeat found in cheap mince.  Clearly unmedicated horsemeat in itself is no worse than pig or cow, but the unaccountability, indeed criminality, of parts of the meat industry threaten people’s health.  Journalist John Harris clarifies things here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/17/no-more-excuses-go-vegetarian.

Add to this the way the immensely depressing state of fish stocks from the predations of unsustainable fishing industries around the world also rules out fish-eating as a decent option.  And finally, some powerful new evidence shows that vegetarians are a third less likely to suffer from heart disease: http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2013/130130.html.

On the positive side, delicious veggie fare is more accessible than ever.  On the go, good sandwich, sushi and soup options are readily available.  For home cooking, Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty, to give one example, is crammed with delicious, special recipes that banish for ever any idea that going meatless equals some kind of suffering.  And a new alternative is due to be released in mid May , Elizabeth David’s On Vegetables.   This is a collection of classic sans-meat dishes made with generally much shorter ingredient lists than Ottolenghi’s, according to no-nonsense European traditions.  It is also sumptuous looking – so not a hair shirt in sight.  At the very least why not have a couple of meat free days a week (and keep your mind open to extending this)?

Becca, my wife, came up with the idea for the book last year after she had gone vegetarian. We sat down at our kitchen table, with Felix our second son, who had been one for some time and compiled the recipes together. We then passed on the list to Jill Norman, my aunt’s literary executor, who acted as editor for the book.

I was vegetarian for the last nine years of Elizabeth’s life and enjoyed cooking many vegetarian meals with her. She was not vegetarian herself but had no objection to the principle. She was interested in simple, honest, local cooking and many of the recipes in her early books were vegetarian - reflecting the diets of the regions of the Mediterranean. What would she have thought of her recipes being published as nearly vegetarian compilation? I believe she would have moved with the times and been keen to help promote vegetable based meals, perhaps have been happy to define herself as a flexitarian - the new term to define those who wish to eat meat very occasionally or in special circumstances.

We left the recipes untouched and some contain small amounts of meat, fish. With a little skill and imagination you can keep the essence of the dishes and cook vegetarian meals, and hence the name of the book, Elizabeth David on Vegetables.

The book is published by Quadrille.

This week, we’ll be posting a few of Johnny’s favorite recipes from Elizabeth David’s Christmas in the spirit of the holidays. Send us your photos of Elizabeth’s dishes in your kitchen and we’ll post them on Grey Matters. Happy Cooking!

It is not generally known that pumpkin can make an excellent chutney, rich and dark. The recipe below produces a mixture with a taste which is spicy but not to sharp; the pumpkin slices retain something of their shape, and shine translucently through the glass jars.

Green grocers very often sell pumpkins by the piece; a whole one is, of course, cheaper, but remember that once it is cut it will not keep longer than about ten days.

Ingredients are a 2 ½ lb piece of pumpkin (gross weight), 1 lb of ripe tomatoes, ½ lb of onions, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 oz of sultanas, ¾ lbs each of soft dark brown sugar and white caster sugar, 2 tablespoons of salt, 2 scant teaspoons each of ground ginger, black peppercorns and allspice berries, 1 ¼ pints of wine vinegar or cider vinegar.

Peel the pumpkin, discard seed and cottony center. Slice, then cut into pieces roughly 2 inches wide and long and ½ inch thick. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes, skin and slice them. Peel and slice the onions and the garlic.

Put all solid ingredients, including spices (crush the peppercorns and allspice berries in a mortar) and sugar, in your preserving pan. (For chutneys, always use heavy aluminum, never untinned copper jam pans.) Add vinegar. Bring gently to the boil, and then cook steadily, but not at a gallop, until the mixture is jammy. Skim from time to time, and toward the end of the cooking, which will take altogether about 50 minutes, stir very frequently. Chutney can be a disastrous sticker if you don’t give it your full attention during the final stages.

This is a long-keeping chutney, but, like most chutneys, it is best if cooked to a moderate set only; in other words it should still be a little bit runny; if too solid it will quickly dry up.

Ladle into pots, which should be filled right to the brim. When cold cover with rounds of waxed paper, and then with a double layer of thick greaseproof paper. (Or use jars with plastic-lined lids that will not be corroded by vinegar. JN) Transparent covers that let in the light are not suitable for chutney.

The yield from these quantities will be approximately 3 ½ lb; and although it may be a little more extravagant as regards fuel and materials, I find chutney cooked in small batches more satisfactory than when produced on a large scale.

It is worth noting that should it be more convenient, all ingredients for the chutney can be prepared, mixed with sugar and vinegar, and left for several hours or over night (but not longer than 12 hours) in a covered bowl before cooking.

*Recipe from Elizabeth David’s Christmas, David R. Godine: Boston, 2008. US Edition, p 138-139.