Andrew Dargue - Vanilla Black : fresh flavours for your vegetarian kitchen

Andrew Dargue and Donna Conroy founded Vanilla Black in York in 2004, before relocating the restaurant to London in 2008. The restaurant is now recognised as one of the best vegetarian establishments in the country and is recommended in the Michelin Guide.

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Saltyard Books

An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright Andrew Dargue 2015

Photography Emma Lee 2015

The right of Andrew Dargue to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781444794014

Saltyard Books

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.saltyardbooks.co.uk

Contents

This book is from the people behind Vanilla Black, but the food is not from the restaurant. Well, not entirely, anyway. The recipes here will give an insight into some of the things that we do, but this is a book for home cooks.

At our restaurant, we serve a twist on traditional English and French classical dishes, reinvented as vegetarian food. The fact that it is vegetarian is not the point; in fact, its neither here nor there. Its not food for vegetarians, in the same way that an Italian restaurant does not serve food for Italian people alone. Ours is just good food done in the modern style, and done well. This book is for all people who are interested in food. Modern food.

The dishes we cook at the restaurant are forward-thinking. Yes, we use dehydrators to take every drop of moisture out of a tarragon sponge to render it crisp. And we are also guilty of sous-vide-ing the odd item or two. And its true that as in most restaurants we have a couple of guys washing up constantly. We are guessing that, unless youre astoundingly lucky, you do not have the pair of them in your kitchen.

So, in this book, we give Vanilla Black recipes adapted for the home kitchen. They are still interesting, with flavours, textures and methods that will challenge you both as a cook and as an eater. Our food is challenging. Its different. Smashing stereotypes and proving that vegetarian cuisine can become mainstream is the reason this book you are holding exists.

The recipes here are both intriguing and delicious. We infuse oil with chives to make mayonnaise. We toast oats before cooking, to make porridge taste nutty. We take butter to the point of caramelisation before using it in a brown butter filling for old-style pineapple upside-down cake. Within these pages, theres a recipe for a new and improved cheese-and-onion pasty and chutneys and jams (and brown sauce) made in the microwave. We make home-made curds. We pickle grapes. When Savoy cabbage pudding was on the menu, we couldnt make enough of them. People used to order them when they rang to book. It is made from only cabbage, cheese, butter and stale bread, but they work together astoundingly well. And there are also trickier techniques here, such as roasting white chocolate to serve with a cutting-edge dessert. This book is about cooking something simple or something technical, but above all it is about having fun and trying flavour combinations you may not have previously considered.

Many times a day in the restaurant we hear Im not vegetarian, but that was really good. You dont have to be vegetarian. Just try this food. Play with it. See what you think. And if you want to serve it with a piece of grilled chicken, be our guest.

However you serve it, enjoy it.

Apologies in advance, no pasta bake or vegetable curry. Ten years ago we didnt think we would have to put that warning on our website, but we did.

We became vegetarian for no major reason. No dreadlocks were involved. We didnt hug trees. We kept our leather settee. We just stopped eating meat and fish. If someone had told us at 16 that we would be vegetarian adults, we would have laughed. Andrew would probably have asked them for a fight.

But we liked eating out. A lot. When we went to a restaurant, the vegetarian option was always mushroom risotto or halloumi kebabs. Andrew a chef since the age of 16 would say that he didnt need to see the menu, he knew what was going to be on it already.

So we decided to open our own vegetarian restaurant. We set some standards for the food: no dish would rely on pasta, meat substitutes or heavy spicing. No piles of pulses would be used to bulk up a dish. We would create menus of unusual combinations which challenged the norms. There would be no postcards in the window advertising yoga classes. And we wouldnt follow anyone elses rules. It was a massive adventure to us to leave our jobs and start the restaurant. Andrew had been teaching catering and Donna was nursing.

What we do is different. Someone once said to us that you put your head above the parapet and you dont care. In fact, we would make more money if we served veggie burgers and chips. But we do care. We care about making a difference and about breaking the mould.

We opened Vanilla Black in York in December 2004 with one member of staff: a student from the local university. And we started to divide people. We served a savoury Bakewell tart containing chilli jam and a savoury almond sponge, with vegetable vinaigrette. Once, when I took it to a customer, he took one look, got up and walked out. However, slowly we started to attract people (most of them meat-eaters) looking for something interesting.

Almost everyone was very complimentary. But one of the most interesting reactions was from Andrews father, who apologetically told us that it was a shame that he couldnt come in, because Im not vegetarian. Finally, after a long session pointing out that cornflakes, tomato soup and cheese on toast were vegetarian, the penny dropped and he came along for a meal. And thoroughly enjoyed it.

But, then, like anything does, running a restaurant became a job We became restless and we felt we had outgrown our little restaurant. We needed another challenge.

So we decided to move to London. That was certainly a challenge. We knew absolutely nobody there and had only ever visited once or twice as tourists and yet, a few weeks later, we went and had a look around We liked what we saw and decided to make the move. We were nave but we werent arrogant. We werent under any illusion that we would arrive and all would be rosy and good. But we didnt think it would be as hard as it was.