Vegan Cookbooks: Rose Elliot

Rose Elliot has been publishing vegan cookbooks since the 1960s, and her fabulous career continues to this day. We got a chance to speak with Rose, who is here to bring us up to speed with her latest creations.

I feel so privileged to have been part of the big movement to vegetarian and vegan cookery, with my first book Simply Delicious, written when I was just 19, and then of course all the books that followed. I’m now over 70!

I was brought up as a vegetarian but was veering towards veganism from a very early age. I remember sending off for recipes from the Vegan Society when I was about 12 years old, and spending a whole day trying to make vegan milk (you couldn’t buy it in those days), and even ‘butter’, using practically every utensil in my mother’s kitchen! How different things are now.

Experimentation

I’m inventing things all the time! I’ve been experimenting a lot with lentil dals - I like to make them nice and thick with split red lentils, coconut milk, and spices such as turmeric, and cinnamon, with lots of chopped fresh coriander on top.

Growth

It’s a very exciting time to be vegan. I remember thinking years ago, how wonderful it would be to be able to get vegan or vegetarian food in a restaurant, or even to be able to buy easily the ingredients to make it at home, and now of course it’s happened.

I’m more happy than I can say to see the burgeoning interest in the vegan diet because of the increase in health it brings, along with, most importantly, the decrease in the number of animals being slaughtered, or ‘used’ for their milk. Also significant, as the move to veganism continues to burgeon, is the better use of the earth’s resources: I believe that at least ten vegans can survive on the amount of land it takes to feed one meat-eater.

Christmas dinner?

Well it has to be my white nut roast with parsley and herb stuffing, three layers, made in a loaf tin, turned out, garnished with parsley and lemon slices (to pick up the delicious flavours in the stuffing), and surrounded by crunchy golden roast potatoes!

Tips for newbies

Just do it! Find some simple recipes you really fancy, or treat yourself to some delicious readymade vegan foods. You’ll be surprised how much you enjoy it!

The Favourite Rose Elliot Cookbook

Oh dear, that’s a difficult one, it’s almost as impossible as choosing between one’s children! I tend to say ‘the book I’m writing at the moment’, but I think I’ll always have a special soft spot for my two first books, Simply Delicious, and Not Just a Load of Old Lentils, because their success was such a huge surprise, and opened the door to my life as a cookery writer.

Rose Elliot

www.roseelliot.com