Vege-ing out (+recipes)

Chilled red bell pepper soup. Photo / Supplied

My night-time reading has come down to browsing though various enlightening pages from a "foodies" website: chowhound.chow.com.

It is packed with all manner of food stories, recipes and queries, including one from Josefine, asking advice on where to take her husband for dinner in London. Her criteria were: interesting decor, traditional food at a maximum £60 ($134) a head including grog - and it must be vegetarian.

Tall order, I thought to myself, but soon enough one of her fellow online foodies suggested the top floor of the Vegan Rootmaster double-decker bus in London's East End.

Luckily, these days vegetarians are treated a lot more kindly by chefs than once upon a time when their only option might have been a curried vegetable pita pocket.

Recently, there has been a major shift in what is being offered in restaurants and cafes, acknowledging the diner's dietary and health concerns, and paying more attention to showing off key ingredients and where they have been sourced.

About 260km west of Melbourne is the amazing kitchen of Dan Hunter at Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld. Hunter takes vegetarian cuisine very seriously, sorting 150 varieties of organic and heirloom vegetables, leaves and herbs produced from the restaurant's 1500sq m of kitchen gardens each year.

Orchards and an olive grove surrounding the hotel provide stone fruit, apples, pears, berries, figs, quince and olives. Fresh free-range eggs are collected daily.

In Chicago, fuelling his love for transforming vegetables to a higher plane, chef Charlie Trotter creates magic with eight unforgettable seasonal vegetable dishes - like warm carrot custard with young coconut and kaffir lime - offered on a dedicated vegetarian menu.

So, to move on from boiled rice and celery sticks, a visit to your local farmers' market or produce store offering freshly harvested and un-bruised goodies is definitely on the menu. For a quick vegetarian treat, button mushrooms can be turned upside down with stems attached, coated in cinnamon butter and roasted.

Onions cut in half, roasted with olive oil and fresh thyme sprigs until the skins have popped up, are a sweet, tender sensation in the mouth. To create a delicious dip, puree the onion with Dijon mustard, brown sugar and lemon juice, then serve with crunchy crostini.

Whether it's pristine zucchini flowers filled with ricotta, sundried tomato, grated brazil nuts, basil and parmesan, fried until crisp in chickpea tempura batter, or the sexy combination of a fig flan with roasted beets, creamy feta, toasted walnuts and tamarillo vinegar, vegetarian food need show no signs of hippy culture. Just keep it fresh, flavour-driven and uncomplicated.

Recipes:

- Chilled red bell pepper soup
- Fig flan, beets, walnuts and blue cheese