Vegetarian cooking

Recently some friends of mine that were vegetarians went out to eat at a high end inn and restaurant. Unfortunately they paid good money for vegetarian meals that simply were not done well. Felt bad for them, but from past experience I know how absentminded high end restaurants are when it comes to vegetarian cooking. Some of the chefs carry a negative view of vegetarians, dumbfounded at how they could reject the delicious entree's they made with dead animals (seriously, good stuff).

In my last profession I was a chef. I was managing a kitchen that served "family style" dinners for the Appalachian Mountain Club's Pinkhan Notch Visitor Center. This was a place that catered to a lot of outdoorsy types: hippies, crunchies, but mostly yippies (yuppy hippies). In this crowd there's bound to be some vegetarians. These folks got their own prepared dish.

I went to college to learn all kinds of fine dining. My associate's in Culinary Arts prepared me for the world of classy places food that usually required a dead animal in some form. However vegetarian cooking was really not a concern for school. We trained mostly for fancy pants dining. This was a different kind of dining I was dealing with. The AMC provided me with a challenge: how do I make a meal healthy, delicious, and vegetarian?

I hit the books, and the internet, learning what I could about the different kinds of vegetarians, ranging from those that only abstained from beef, to those that ate no animal products whatsoever, including honey. The worst of these different groups were the "Fruitarians" that would only eat absolutely local food, preferrably from their own backyard. Had to tell off one of these folks one time when they demanded everything on their plate be from within 5 miles of the lodge, with none of the food provided by them. Told them good luck finding any restaurant that'll cater to such an obnoxious request in our area. They huffed, puffed, and ate their food anyway.

I decided the best way to go would be with vegan dishes, since about 25% of the vegetarians I met were vegans. This just meant no animal products. I could work with that. Spices, herbs, veggies stocks/bases, salt, good veggie oil and vegetables/starch cooked properly. I found some decent recipes, put them to use with some encouragement from some of the vegetarian staff members.

One of the big things they told me was that protein was usually missing in good vegetarian dishes. So each dish had to have kale, spinach, beans, tofu or tempeh (grain/tofu combo). I did pretty well with these, and since there's a nice variety of beans I could go with, it gave me options. I had a rule though: the dishes I made had to be something I would eat and enjoy. This lead to me being a vegetarian for all of three days. It was a neat experiment, but I decided that to be a decent chef, I still had to enjoy meat. And dead animal cooked right just tastes good!

If I hadn't worked at the AMC, I'm sure learning to cook decent vegetarian food wouldnt have become a priority for me. I'm glad it did though. At least whenever I have some vegetarian friends joining us for dinner, I can confidently make something they can enjoy. I promised my friends that I'd make them a special vegetarian dish sometime after hearing about their recent bad dining experience. I may not be a professional chef anymore, but I know I can make damn near anyone a satisfying meal.