The Large Vegetarian Peppie Kokkie Cookbook

When I left my parents’ home somewhere in the late eighties, when I was about nineteen, to move into a student house in Leiden, I was given a binder full of recipes. These were the dishes I grew up with, recipes that my mother had cut out of newspapers and magazines over the years, had retyped or copied from cookbooks, or had written down in her neat slanted schoolgirl handwriting from sisters, neighbors and girlfriends.

Her unsurpassed Hungarian sauerkraut, a casserole that used a lot of bacon, pork, paprika powder and sour cream and which my father liked so much that he called it ‘Very good!!’ had written next to. A dish entitled ‘Spaghetti exotic’, which in retrospect was simply a recipe for noodles, but made with Italian pasta. The hot lightning that she liked to make at the beginning of autumn and the veal croquettes that she always baked on New Year’s Day.

Now it was my turn to put together such a farewell gift for my child. After almost a year of searching for suitable and, above all, affordable housing, a room suddenly became available in Moerwijk in The Hague. I was happy for him, you know. Very happy in fact, he was really ready for it, nineteen years old, and besides, it would be a thirteen minute bike ride from my house to his and vice versa, so really, I was the last person to stop him. But still, it’s still your chick.

That I would make a collection of his favorite recipes for him was almost certain from the time of Pep’s birth. It was also obvious that it would not involve cut-out or copied recipes, but my own cooking. In fact, I had had nineteen years to prepare for this project. What I had not anticipated was that he would become a vegetarian in his last year at home, a decision that in one fell swoop gave his once so beloved satays, the chicken with rosemary and lemon and the pasta with sausage their prominent place in the only lost cookbook that still exists in my head.

In short, I had to make a switch when I started The Large Vegetarian Peppie Kokkie Cookbook. Which family classics could I convert into a vegetarian recipe? (Ragù bolognese, which could have been done with lentils instead of minced meat. Mom’s peanut sauce, which could have been done without trassi. Pilav with chicken? Pilav with vegetarian chicken pieces. Pulled pork? Pulled jackfruit.) And what were the most successful vegetarian dishes of the past year? ? (Gnocchi with tomatoes and mozzarella from the baking tray. Stuffed peppers. Chili sin carne. Chickpea stew. Indian vegetable curry. Mac ‘n cheese.)

One day, just before he moved, I told my youngest son about the most iconic dish from my own student days: pasta with bacon, mushrooms, spinach and Boursin. “Sounds good,” he said. And that evening we made Boursin pasta together, but with vegetarian bacon. And it was good. Not just the pasta, which seriously tasted much better than I remembered. But everything. My chick in Moerwijk, where he would cook for himself, his housemates and his study friends in his own kitchen, perhaps even from The Great Vegetarian Peppie Kokkie Cookbook for Hungry Students. Me in the parental, half-empty nest. Thirteen minutes of cycling between us.