Vegetarian etiquette dilemmas - the first in an occasional series

I was reminded the other day of a vegetarian etiquette dilemma that I have experienced.

The situation:  you're the only vegetarian in a group of friends dining at a restaurant.  The restaurant is the sort where it is common/typical to order a number of dishes for the group to share - think Indian, Chinese, tapas, Mexican, Lebanese, that sort of thing.  What do you do?

What I usually do is say, when we're all at the perusing of menus stage, that I'm vegetarian (or, if everyone knows that, to remind people), that I'm happy to share if everyone else is happy to order a reasonable number of vegetarian dishes so that I can have enough to eat but that, if the group as a whole would like to order lots and lots of meat, then I'll just get a vegetarian main course for myself.

Most of the time, what happens is that my friends say that that's fine and we order - depending on the place - usually around a half to three quarters vegetarian food, my friends all assume that I will (as I do) eat more than my "fair" share of the vegetarian dishes and, in exchange, they get my "share" of the meat to split between them.

However, I did have one bad experience, of going out to eat and doing this and having the other members of the group making passive aggressive comments about how they hadn't had a chance to try [insert name of vegetarian dishes that I had more than my "fair" share of and finished (NB - not that I did so without leaving the final pieces on the table for quite some time, giving ample opportunity for others to take them instead) ] which I found quite difficult.  Particularly because I kind of wanted to explain - "but we're splitting the bill evenly and I don't think that's particularly fair if I have had significantly less food than you" - but couldn't really do so because the comments weren't quite direct enough that I could tackle them without sounding extremely defensive.  I also sort of of felt like it was pretty obvious that I would be eating more than 1/number of people at the table's worth of the vegetarian stuff.   Basically because everyone else clearly felt that that wasn't sufficient for them because they had ordered meat dishes to supplement.  So why would it be enough for me?  However, I had forgotten that so many people suffer from the assumption that vegetarians are mysteriously able to survive on half the food that omnivores eat.  Vegetarianism, not just about leaving out the meat and eating what's left on the plate, people.  /End digression

This made me wonder whether I might be better advised to add to my opening spiel - "and, incidentally, I am assuming that you're ok with having my share of the meat in exchange for me having more than 1/number of people at the table's worth of the vegetarian food?" - though that seems tremendously awkward.

What would you /do you do?

Restaurant review - Avenue, St James, London

Recently, my lovely husband and I took advantage of the Evening Standard's Dine offer (now closed) and visited Avenue.  I picked it mostly because it is close to where I work (Victoria) and I have yet to really find a restaurant that I love near work which I feel is a bit of a shame.

As regular readers will know,  I am (greedily) mostly all about the food in a restaurant.  If a restaurant serves food that I love, as long as there aren't rodents visible and and the staff don't spit in my face, I will pretty much be happy to go back there.

That said, the service at Avenue was so good that even I noticed!  The waitstaff had it pitched absolutely perfectly - they were always prompt, they anticipated when you'd want more water, when you'd want to order dessert, etc, etc.  And they had ridiculously good attention to detail - e.g. we were sat at a long row of tables for two that were fairly close together and they seated groups as far as possible spaced out along the row, to avoid you having to be unnecessarily close to another party.  The waiter also won my heart by filling my hankering for ginger tea after the meal by getting the bar staff to add some chopped fresh ginger to some green tea.

The attention to detail carried through to the food too - for example, my pumpkin risotto was elevated from standard vegetarian risotto fare by the toasted hazelnuts on top that gave it a much more interesting texture.

The only complaint from me was that the puddings (very nice - banana sticky toffee puddings) weren't really anywhere near hot when they appeared, which was a bit of a pity.

I think it may be just a touch too expensive (£15-£20 for a main course) for me to want to go there regularly for the a la carte menu but I think I could definitely be tempted back for the set menu or the pre/post theatre deals that they have.

Children learning cooking in schools

Photo from openideo.com

I've been following the recent stories about children learning to cook in school with some interest.  It's taken me a while to unpick my thoughts because I have a few contradictory ones.

I'm all in favour of children learning how to cook - I think it's normal and natural for children to be involved in cooking.  In fact, I think cooking is in many ways a rather childish activity.  I think I partially enjoy it because of the sense of play and the ability to be messy in a socially acceptable way.  I like being able to do things with my hands, whether that's separating eggs with my fingers or shaping dough or whatever.  

Let's face it, this sort of thing is just plain fun.
Photo from www.kidspot.com.au

However, I'm not sure how I feel about children learning to cook in schools.  I'm not sure that I think that learning to cook should be done in a classroom kind of setting, I think that's almost separating it out from its natural context.  I think the way to learn to cook is to be given little tasks to do that ramp up in difficulty as you get better - when you're very little, you pod peas and peel cloves of garlic and then you progress to chopping things and then seasoning and then more advanced things like making dough and higher risk things like rotis and frying things like bhajiyas.  And I think it's important that that isn't separated out into a "now you learn to cook for an hour" but just part of your day to day life.

But, on the other hand, I get that not everyone is lucky enough to have families who cook and to learn how to cook in that kind of context and - obviously - I think they too should get to learn how to cook.  Because I think cooking is an important life skill for so many reasons - it's important for your health, it's important for your finances, it's important because it's fun and more people should have more fun.  

So, maybe, learning how to cook in school wouldn't be so bad.  But then I think about how none of the various articles that I've seen (perhaps I've missed one) on this subject have mentioned at all the cultural issues in play.  I mean, take this article from the Telegraph which describes at the end dishes that the author thinks that everyone should know how to make - a fair amount of meat in there which isn't going to work for vegetarian children, a couple of things that sound like they aren't Kosher and Indian food is all covered with "daal" and "curry"...  Now, obviously, schools in areas with large numbers of say Indian students or Muslim students or Jewish students or whatever are going to tailor that curriculum for their school but what happens when you are - as I was at one school - the only vegetarian kid in the whole school?  Do you just sit out the lessons that cover how to make a roast chicken or do you get a carrot to roast instead?  No-one seems to have thought about these issues at all.

I'm not suggesting that all these cooking classes should cover is vegetarian food as that would - of course - be a bit insane as many of the children will not be vegetarian and so will not really find that useful.  But I think it does bring home that food is so personal and so cultural that trying to teach it to a whole group of children with different backgrounds and assumptions is opening up a can of worms.  Because - at the end of the day - cooking is really quite different from other things that are taught in school.  There are so many different ways to do it and so many different ways to achieve a healthy balanced diet that, inevitably, it's going to be difficult when one way is taught.  

Now, I'm sure there are ways to get around this - teaching a wide variety of dishes from different traditions and focusing on techniques rather than straightforward recipes - but it's going to be incredibly difficult and I, perhaps overly cynically, rather doubt that many schools are going to teach anything other than "classic" British cooking plus a token nod towards chicken tikka masala or some other completely anglicised Indian dish.  I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

Pancakes! Baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Happy Pancake Day!

Pancakes are pure genius.  Want something sweet?  Have a pancake.  Want something savoury and stodgy and comfort foody?  Have a pancake.  Want something savoury and posh and delicate?  Have a pancake.  Want something spicy?  Have an Indian pancake.  Is there anywhere in the world that hasn't developed its own type of pancake?

Anyway.  My lovely husband loves pancakes like all sane human beings but has plans for the evening so we decided to have pancakes the night before.  Which is perfect because it means that I can write and schedule a post to go up on Pancake Day itself which is pretty cunning.

I used Nigel Slater's recipe for the pancakes themselves and stuffed them with a somewhat random mixture of things that I had in the kitchen:  fried four chopped onions, added some mushrooms and garlic, seasoned with salt and pepper and added in some grated cheddar and chopped parsley at the end, after taking it off the heat.

onion, garlic, mushroom, parsley and cheddar pancake filling

Then, made the pancakes.  I love doing things like this on the hob - watching the butter foam, having to speedily swirl the mixture, having to flip them over.  It's all great fun!

Pancake

Pancake

As each pancake was done, I put in the batter for the next and while that was cooking, I'd fill the cooked pancake with the mixture and put in a baking dish.  I went for folding the pancakes into quarters.  Mostly because that fit well into the baking dish I had - you could do it in any number of ways.

the first of many

starting to fill up!

Nigel Slater suggested adding a knob of butter to each pancake before it went in the oven but that seemed a touch unhealthy after all the butter that went into the pan to grease the pancakes so I just went for topping with grated parmesan.  Because obviously that is totally healthy.  Baked at 200 degrees C for about 10 minutes to heat through again and melt the parmesan on top.  Nigel Slater suggests baking filled savoury pancakes for 30 minutes but that would have been waaaay too long for these, they were perfectly done after 10.

Mmmmm.  These were lovely.  I love pancakes.  Not just for Pancake Day but nevertheless Pancake Day is an excellent excuse for a few!

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Gelato in London - Black Vanilla, Greenwich

So, continuing my quest for gelato in London, we went to Black Vanilla in Greenwich yesterday.  It was very very good.

I had some apple sorbet that was basically the best apple sorbet that I have ever had and I have eaten a lot of apple sorbet.  It was just such a perfect texture, no iciness at all, just completely smooth.  The lemon meringue ice-cream that I had with it was not quite as nice - for my taste not nearly lemony enough - but perhaps it wasn't a great combination with a nicely sour apple sorbet.

My lovely husband had peanut butter and jam ice-cream which I thought was really interesting - I had kind of expected them to go for making the jam quite sweet and fruity and then have the peanut butter as the salty counterpart but, actually, they went for the peanut butter as quite sweet and the jam as the sour counterpart which was unexpectedly really nice.  I hate peanut butter and jam as a sandwich combination so it was quite impressive that I liked the ice-cream!  He also had the apple pie ice-cream which was also very nice.

Mmmmm.  Definitely going back.

An ode to Manjula's Kitchen

- Have you seen this website?
- I'm not sure about the handwo recipe, I use more ginger in mine

The other day, at a family party, my cousins and I had a bit of a bonding moment over Manjula's Kitchen.  One of my cousins exclaimed "What?  You've heard of it?  Is it famous?"  As I said to him at the time, no, it isn't, it's only famous amongst young East African Gujaratis living in this country who were, at some point, vaguely shown how to make their favourite Gujarati dishes by their mothers/aunts/grandmothers/random visiting "aunties" but have no idea how to actually make them.

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that when you google for your favourite Gujarati recipe from childhood, the first hit is Manjula's Kitchen.  Which is brilliant because it actually gives you the recipe that you want.  There are some great Indian cooking websites and blogs out there but, almost without exception, they tend to provide you with something that is slightly different to what you were looking for (if you are a UK dwelling East African Gujarati).

Now, I think South Indian food is fantastic, and Mumbai street food is some of my favourite food (like all Gujaratis, I think Punjabi food is too oily, though, sorry to any Punjabi readers), but sometimes I just want the recipe for the dish that I grew up eating.  Almost invariably it's something that my nanima or my mother showed me how to make "oh, it's so easy you just have to remember the lemon juice" and then I start to think about making it and realise that I know all about the critical importance of the lemon juice but have no idea what sort of flour to use.

I do post the odd Gujarati food recipe from time to time, and I hope my readers enjoy them but - really - Manjula is the real deal and you should head over there and check out her site.

Olive stuffed tomatoes and parsley and red onion salad

Olive stuffed tomatoes and red onion and parsley salad

Due to insane busyness at work, I have a number of things mentally queued up to post about.  This was actually what we had a a starter for our Christmas Day meal which tells you something about how long my mental queue is!

Cherry tomatoes being hollowed out

Because we were having a relatively heavy main - spanokopita - I wanted something light for the starter but, at the same time, something special.  For some reason, things always feel more special when they're stuffed.  I suppose it's because you know that someone spent ages with their thumb in a series of tomatoes to produce it. Even if that someone is you.  The main lesson that I took from this is that, if you do not want your thumb to be completely numb at the end of this, you should make sure the tomatoes are room temperature before you begin. 

Anyway, that life lesson aside, this was pretty good.  I got some cherry tomatoes - well, baby plum tomatoes, I think but it amounts to the same thing - hollowed them out with my thumb, stuffed them with olives (I had to chop the olives to get them inside but obviously this depends on the relative sizes of your olives and your tomatoes), and served on a bed of chopped red onion and herbs. 

Red onion and parsley salad

Olive stuffed tomatoes and red onion and parsley salad

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

I've been enjoying Sally Butcher's book Veggiestan which we have out from the library at the moment and am - as regular readers will doubtless be aware - rather easily persuaded into trying any recipe that involves fried aubergines.

There are two things, though, that really irritate me about the book: 

• firstly, that it is randomly patronising at times "if you don't have a lid, you can improvise one with foil", really?  really?! thank you so much for that tip, it's changed my culinary life, I would not at all have figured that out under my own steam... ; and
• secondly, as knowledgeable as the author seems to be about Middle Eastern food, she seems to be almost entirely unaware of its connections to Indian food.  For instance, she has a whole page on how drinking a salty, yoghurty drink is uniquely Iranian, *cough* salted lassi *cough*. Gujarati and Afghani food, especially, have a lot in common.  I learned a while back that there's strong historical evidence that my sub-caste (Lohana) are from Afghanistan originally, which I sometimes ponder when making recipes like this one which clearly are extremely Indian in flavours.

Basically, you fry some aubergines:

Frying aubergine slices

Frying aubergine slices

Add tomatoes, onions, chilli, coriander and tumeric and simmer for about 30 minutes, adding water if you need it:

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander and
chilli

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander and
chilli

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander
and chilli after 30 minutes of simmering

Layer it in a dish with the yoghurty sauce (yoghurt, lemon juice, garlic and mint - basically raita *cough* Sally Butcher..) and serve either hot or at room temperature.  Both myself and the lovely spouse thought it tasted even better the next day.

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

cheese-baked egg-stuffed tomatoes - Sally Butcher recipe

Baked tomatoes with eggs and cheese

For no particular reason, I've been making a few things lately that involve baking eggs inside things.  I love eggs and baked eggs are a great way to have eggs for dinner, rather than the usual breakfast.  I also rather enjoy the thrill of fitting the eggs inside whatever it is.

I have Sally Butcher's Veggiestan out of the library at the moment and one of the recipes that I instantly wanted to try was this one for tomatoes stuffed with eggs and topped with cheese.  Cunningly, it involves putting some bread underneath to sop up the juices and make more substantial.

These were pretty easy - just scooping out the inside of tomatoes, frying some onions, mixing some of the inside of the tomato with the onions, cracking an egg inside each and topping with cheese but look a lot more impressive.  I did think that they might go better with brunch than dinner, though.

Hollowed out tomatoes

Hollowed tomatoes with eggs inside

Stuffed tomatoes with eggs and cheese

Baked tomatoes with eggs and cheese

Salsa

For some reason, it's taken me ages to get salsa right.  It's not that different to Gujarati chutneys (not what is in English considered a "chutney" but spicy sauces of various descriptions to accompany samosas and bhajias and other such savoury things) which I can manage just fine but salsa just never worked for me.  I tried various recipes online but the consistency just didn't come out right - too watery or too chunky or both. ARGH.

Anyway, the other day, we were having Mexican food and I resolved to try again with salsa.  I've tested this recipe out a couple of times since (in the interests of science, obviously, not just because it resulted in more Mexican food) and it appears to work.  Hurrah!  I no longer have to buy it at the supermarket and feel like a dismal failure.

Salsa

Recipe:

Quantity:  plenty for two people who really like salsa.

Chop four tomatoes and two onions finely (do not use a food processor, this makes it all too watery) - I like pretty much a 1:1 ratio of tomatoes to onions but, obviously, if you aren't as fond of onion, you may want to dial back on the onions.

Add the juice of a lime.  If you don't have a lime, lemon works pretty much equally well.

Add  about two tablespoons worth of tomato puree - I find this is the key to making it not watery.

To taste, depending on how hot you like your salsa:  red chilli flakes, paprika, sumac, black pepper.  I find the blend of different types of pepper gives it more depth.

And, obviously, a bit of salt.  Optionally, a little bit (like a teaspoon or so) of vodka gives it a little kick that's quite nice.  Topping with chopped coriander is also good but not vital.