food to glow

Along with the nut loaf and the veggie lasagne, veggie burgers have long been the butt of anti-vegetarian jokes. These have also been the claggy, yet somehow throat-stickingly dry, offerings of unimaginative restaurants attempting to cater for their non flesh-eating patrons.

For years vegetarians ate these sad excuses for meals: nut loaves that disintegrated on the fork, requiring mashing up with the ubiquitous side of peas in order to ‘catch’ it; the burger patties mimicking the shape of their meaty brethren but failing oh so miserably in the taste department – unless you like heavily-salted cardboard. Such nasty meals were penitence for shunning the norm. A hail Mary for the culinary sinner.

While I can’t offer evidence that the nut loaf has been rehabilitated, I recently had a couple of separate conversations with clients and colleagues, and they were extolling the palate-pleasing pleasures of veggie lasagnes. Homemade ones. This recipe got a mention {it’s not a looker in the photos, but it is well-tasty}. We all thought that – whether one was vegetarian or not – a thoughtfully put together layering of slow-cooked tomato sauce, roasted and roughly mashed vegetables, silky pasta sheets and something like spinach or chard mixed with seasoned ricotta is a thing of loveliness. They all said they preferred a decent veggie lasagne to a meat one.

As someone who landed in Scotland in the late 1980s, and who quickly became vegetarian {that’s a story for another day}, I can chart the rehabilitation of the vegetarian. I can’t give an accurate time frame for this change, but from the very late 1990s our collective interest and knowledge of food, and its relationship to health, has without doubt filtered in to the kitchens of restaurants, both high and low of brow. It has become as easy to get a decent veggie burger in a small cafe whose clientele is more oldster than hipster, as it is to get a beautiful plate of foraged greens topped with spiced and sauced homemade tofu from the fancier joints. Maybe easier.

All of this is good news because we the home cook can benefit from others’ more public creativity. Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr and other social media also have a huge influence. As do our links with other cultures – either from visiting them and barely containing our glee when experiencing new and novel tastes, or from buying new-to-us ingredients that are staple foods elsewhere.

My biggest culinary discovery has been, as regular readers will know, kimchi. Again, I can’t quite remember when I first tasted it but I do know that I would have been holding back a serious puppy-wiggle of excitement on first taste. I might have had a little dance under the table. I do that. My Dad calls it ‘happy feet’. I love it not only for the intriguing almost indescribable taste, but also the health aspects of improved digestion and potentially immune function, too. But I really like it mainly for the taste.

I’ve blogged a few recipes using kimchi. All completely inauthentic uses, I should add. A Korean acquaintance told me that Westerners have really opened her eyes to the potential of kimchi beyond the traditional. I guess we could say that about any food that makes its way across national borders. We mix our new finds with old loves and techniques to create something unique. I think that’s what I have done here. I haven’t seen anything quite like it on the Internet. Maybe because other people think it’s gross, I don’t know!

Anyway, I am adding to the rehabilitation of the much-maligned vegetable burger with a judicious whack of tongue-tantalising kimchi. It is so quick and easy that it can be knocked up in almost the time it takes to bake a frost-coated veggie burger pulled from the freezer.

Edinburgh pubs, please take note.

Soft food diets: ditch the seeds and blend all of the ingredients throughly before chilling and baking.