I’ve called this blog (my first) New Veggie Cook because its about vegetarian cooking and I am new to it.
I didn’t start cooking seriously until I moved into my own house in the mid-1990s – I had cooked in the student houses I had been in, but, now, have virtually no memory of what I did – although I do recall amazing the other students in college by cooking quiche. They all thought it very sophisticated and clever – I knew how easy it is. Although I hadn’t done a lot of cooking before getting my own place, I had hung around the kitchen for years while my mother, a fabulous cook, had gone about her business. In this regard, my only regret is that I did not take the opportunity to start cooking earlier.
Once I got my own place, I started to cook on a regular basis and realised that I found it profoundly relaxing. Of course, being entirely self-taught, there was (and still is) nothing terribly fancy – I have never even attempted a soufflé. Starting simply, meant starting with Italian-inspired food – this is partly to do with the long Italian food heritage here in Melbourne, and partly to do with the Italian approach to food – which other cuisine includes a masterpiece made of only onions, garlic, tomatoes, olives, pasta and salad?
Of course, I have branched out since then, but the big change came in early 2018 when my wife, Lisa, and I decided to move to a vegetarian diet. We had been discussing the idea for some time but a single event – Why We Changed to a Vegetarian Diet – crystallised our decision.
WOW – a whole new learning curve.
Where to start? I had a few existing recipes that just happened to be vegetarian, but we needed more information and the internet came to our rescue. Lisa is a dietician and so we were initially interested in the nuts and bolts of becoming vegetarian, Animals Australia Veg Starter Kit, particularly from a nutritional perspective. A couple of other places we found useful were Harvard Health – Becoming a Vegetarian and Sanitarium – Vegetarian Eating – Power Proteins .
I then set about the task of finding recipes – much of this merely involved trawling the ‘net and searching for recipes that sounded interesting, tasty, and nutritionally sound, but I remember the earliest and helpful ones were Animals Australia Recipes and Taste Australia – Vegetarian Recipes.
Since then, it has been a matter of looking for new recipes, trying them and modifying them to suit our needs and my cooking style. Accordingly, few, if any, of the recipes I will be posting, can I claim to be wholly original – indeed, you will find a good many old favourites. More often than not, my recipe is a combination of different versions from different places.
I start with a dish that I really want to eat – one whose taste I can imagine even before I start – I gather the best ingredients I can find and enjoy the process of creating. If all goes well, the result will be well appreciated by those for whom I have cooked – I believe that one of the great joys of cooking, is sharing the results with others (a very Italian sentiment). Beyond this, is the occasional “that’s exactly what I had in mind” – a wonderful moment when the food has come out precisely as I had imagined it.
Ingredients and quantities are changed to suit our taste and generally adjusted for two portions (mostly these recipes will be for two people – although my portions are pretty generous, so there are usually leftovers).
The more substantial changes are to the method and order of operations – like all cooks, I have a particular way of approaching a given task and a certain “rhythm” to the way I cook, so it is often that I find myself asking “why would anyone do it that way – it seems clumsy and complicated!”.
I generally don’t mention salt and pepper in the recipes – I simply assume that the cook will be tasting the dish as they go and adjusting the seasoning as appropriate.
Due to the way I have collected the recipes and the fact that many are mash-ups of different versions, makes it difficult for me to identify the sources; nonetheless, if you believe a recipe infringes your copyright please send me a message and I will take it down or add an attribution (a link to your site might be a good thing 😉).
In addition to the above, I have also been exploring some things that are new to me such as ingredient substitution and even totally new ingredients – seitan The Spruce – How to Make Seitan, One Green Planet – How to Make Perfect Seitan, New Veggie Cook – Pork Seitan; nutritional yeast Fat Free Vegan – Nutritional Yeast and aquafaba The Minimalist Baker – Aquafaba are things not even on the radar of a non-vegetarian cook.
That’s enough waffle for now – I’m pretty sure I’ve never actually read the “Introduction” to any cook book – but I, like countless other cooking writers, have now indulged in the self-centred explanation of (some) of my philosophy.
In short, you won’t find anything terribly revolutionary here – just simple, tasty, vegetarian cooking that anyone can prepare at home. I’ll let the recipes speak for themselves.
I’ll be adding recipes on a regular basis, so please keep coming back and please leave comments or send me a message.
