Out of the wilderness

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Posted at 4:20PM, 06 April 2010 by Claire Webb - Writer

Forget hot cross buns, simnel cake and out-sized eggs. This Easter, I only had eyes for the main course: local Welsh lamb, slow-roasted with coriander and garlic, served with a stack of roasties, parsnips, braised leeks, caramelised red onions, broccoli, carrots, swede and mint sauce. I would have been content with a cocktail sausage.

Yes, this year I gave up meat for Lent. My boyfriend slyly suggested it, knowing my inability to refuse a challenge, as we wolfed down pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Little did I realise that abstinence would turn me from an easy-to-please diner - as happy with tofu as bloody steak - into a raging carnivore.

Two days later, at a posh do in Mayfair, I had my first sour taste of vegetarianism. Long minutes after the other guests tucked into their juniper berry-infused crispy duck confit, the veggie option arrived - a lump of yellow mush in a puddle of tomato sauce. My 'Mediterranean vegetable tower with chargrilled polenta and sauce vierge' looked more like a demolition site.

Restaurants are enemy territory for the reluctant veggie

Restaurants are enemy territory for the reluctant veggie. I'd always thought of menus as an appetiser - something for the imagination to feast upon before the starter arrives. Unfussy and allergy-free, I could order anything. However much friends groan at my indecisiveness, I deliberate over every dish.

Suddenly I was confined to pesky little 'v's, and soon discovered that veggie fare makes up what it lacks in spirit and originality with melted cheese. I like gooey cheddar as much as the next person, but it's hardly haute cuisine. Plus, shouldn't there be a price-ceiling for veggie dishes? I was charged £18 for a bowl of bog-standard ratatouille (and I paid - lack of iron must have addled my brain.)

Cooking veggie was easy. If my flatmates ever tired of the menu - spinach curry, sweet potato curry, spinach and sweet potato curry - they were too polite to say. My Dad was less understanding. "Beef stew is veggie. That cow's only ever eaten grass." On Saturday, he declined seconds of butternut squash risotto (he's usually a third, fourth and fifth-helping chap) - "Are you back on proper food, tomorrow?". Yes Dad, I am.

Have you ever tried to give up meat? Or are you a veggie who's sick of being treated like a second-class diner?

Comments

21-22 of 22 comments

sue

1 May 2010, 6:15PM
sue

I also gave up meat for Lent, and although I'm happy to cut down , I would not want to give up meat altogether. I found it difficult to find tasty recipes that the whole family would eat, and would like to ask those who criticised restaurants for their lack of choice what meals they would like to see on menus.

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halle butt

14 July 2010, 8:17AM
halle butt

I cook without meat on occasion, last night we had Burek, Patatas Bravas, Tomato salad, scones with own strawb jam and clotted cream, tonight Wild Rabbit Stiffado, Broad Beans with bacon bits and Charlotte pots, cheese and bikky's, all the veg out of the garden, I shot the bunny a few days ago.

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