| Recipes |
| • Pea Soup |
| • Lentil Sausage |
A curious little book with a long name came across my path recently. The 48-page Food in War Time, Recipes for 100 Inexpensive Dishes; and helpful suggestions for providing Two-Course Dinners for Six People for One Shilling. If you know anything at all about the present state of global currency, you’ll recognize that Food in War Time is not a new book. The “war” referred to in the title is, in fact, World War I. Its premise is thus: Government’s Warning! Eat Less Meat. Written by one George W. Hall of the London Vegetarian Association, it demonstrates the grimmest and least romantic possibilities of vegetarian food in times of rationing. Its forward begins with this inspiring factoid:
Food is required by the animal body for three purposes:
1. To build up the bodily structure
2. To generate force
3. To maintain heat
Gets your mouth watering, doesn’t it? It continues from there, promoting vegetarian food as cheaper, more nutritious, more energizing, less time-consuming to prepare, and less perishable (no small issue in the age of iceboxes). It poses that those who dine on farm animals are really just eating vegetables second hand. There’s an entire paragraph devoted to proper mastication and the dangers of living with lumps of unmasticated food in your stomach. It allows, grudgingly, that the judicious use of herbs and onions can give food “the essential quality of tastiness.”
Then, 100 recipes.
Times are hard again, and they’re only getting harder. Preparing vegetables may have once been quicker for women who spent their days slaving about a house, cooking on coal-fired stoves. But in terms of modern time-consumption, I can’t tell you that McDonald’s isn’t cheaper and faster than preparing fresh vegetarian meals at home. Still, even in hard times — especially in hard times — exploration and imagination will bring more pleasure to your mouth than fretting over health and thrift. Buy some low-cost oddity that you’ve never had before, take it home, and let your kids figure out what to do with it. Pour a little canned beet juice into soups or rice and suddenly your plate is as beautiful as red velvet cake. In cities like Philadelphia and New York, farmers markets are increasingly accepting food stamps, so forgo the steak and spend a little more on fresh eggs. The 21st century is an unprecedented age of culinary choices, and eating cheaply doesn’t have to mean suffering like the British of yesteryear.
In Food in War Time salt is rarely mentioned. Boiling is common. Slogging past recipes like milk-stewed mushrooms and peas pudding, I’ve selected a few of the simplest and cheapest recipes aiming to give them some dazzle. (Sorry, Mr. Hall, but “trying the recipes precisely as written” would be an act of meanness, potentially criminal). For convenience, I’ll summarize the original recipes, and then give you my updated version of the dish, with approximate costs (in New York prices).
Stefany Anne Golberg is an artist, writer, musician, and professional dilettante. She's a founding member of the art collective Flux Factory and lives in New York City. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
| War Time Pea Soup |
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3 onions braised in nut fat* (*see below) |
| War Time Pea Soup Revived with Green Tea and Mint |
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Boil a package of green split peas in a few cups of vegetable stock** until peas are soft. As the peas boil, put a large chopped carrot in foil with a few cloves of garlic, drizzle with olive oil, and bake until soft. Add a cup of green tea to the peas, along with the soft garlic and carrot. Add salt and fresh pepper to taste. If the soup is too “stodgy,” add more vegetable stock or green tea. Blend some fresh mint with a couple spoonfuls of olive oil and a pinch of sugar, and swirl into each bowl. For garnish, drizzle oil over some day-old baguette slices and throw in the oven. $4.50 * “Nut fat” makes an appearance in nearly every recipe as the primary cooking fat. I first assumed Mr. Hall was talking about peanut butter. Interestingly, it’s a “refined” (probably meaning hydrogenated) coconut oil, also referred to as nut margarine, Nutter, Nut Lard, and Butnut. I love coconut-based products and highly recommend them for their flavor if not their saturated fat content. I believe coconut oil was much more prevalent in the U.S. and U.K. at one time, but no longer. If you can find it, though, it’s usually cheap and great for frying. And so, I let the power of Butnut guide me through… |
| War Time Lentil Sausage |
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Boil brown lentils in a pot of water with a clove-studded onion until soft. Drain. Add to the lentils 2 teaspoons of marmite dissolved in water, 2 cups of mashed potatoes, and enough breadcrumbs to make a stiff mixture. Add 2 teaspoons of powdered sage, mold into a sausage, roll in flour, and deep fry in nut fat. Serve with carrots and more mashed potatoes. |
| War Time Lentil Sausage Revived with a Lime, Jalapeno, and Cucumber Yogurt Sauce |
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Tie up a bunch of cloves in a bundle and boil in a few cups of vegetable stock (if you don’t have cloves, use allspice or a couple pinches of cinnamon). Remove the bunch and add half a package of red lentils. Soak overnight until soft and drain. Add a few pinches of salt and fresh pepper. Dice half an onion and fry until caramelized. Add to lentils. Then add a handful or so of flour and about 1/4 cup of curry powder and mix with your hands until you get a nice dough. If you need more flour or curry powder, add. Sausages have such a pedestrian shape, like the fingers of a bloated Bavarian child picking his nose in the Schwarzwald. I pressed my lentil mixture into round scalloped molds instead. If you’ve got it, deep fry in nut fat. If not, peanut oil will do. For the sauce, blend a jalapeno, a handful of fresh basil, and half a cucumber (seedless is best) in a food processor. In a bowl, squeeze half a lime into two cups of yogurt, add your green mix from the processor, and whisk together until smooth. Drizzle over your “sausages”. $8.00, 7 if you skip the cloves. Presentation is an act of love. And it’s positively cheap and easy. Even plating your beloved’s mac ‘n cheese (or your own!) will make it feel special. Shake some spices around your plate, add a swirl of flavored oil. Fresh herbs are always pretty and delicious. In warmer times you can grow your own. Choose the bright scent of freshly ground peppercorns over the dullness of ground pepper. Molds can be found at any thrift or 99-cent store — as far as I’m concerned, everything looks better in a mold. Fishes, hearts, abstract shapes, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t have any molds, use small bowls. Or a fork. Or anything! Imagination can make the everyday richer, and you don’t have to be at war to find decadence in all things. Even vegetables. NOTE: **Vegetable stock is very easy and economical to prepare. Save any leftover water used to boil vegetables, otherwise-discarded vegetable scraps, salt, pepper, fat (olive oil is good or whatever you’ve got that has flavor), and whatever herbs and spices you have around. Boil, reduce, and refrigerate. |
“Veg-o-matic” photograph by Eric Tucker/Getty Images, "Plate" photograph from FoodCollection/Getty Images, recipe photographs by Stefany Anne Golberg.
