Weinstein Bruce - Vegetarian dinner parties : 150 meatless meals good enough to serve to company

Instead of trotting out vegetarian standards, Bruce and Mark have created exciting new explorations of meatless cuisine. The result is a book filled with accessible and delicious recipes to serve to your family and friends. But even more important, this is a lesson in combining flavors, textures, and familiar ingredients in ways that will wake your slumbering palate and excite you to the possibilities of plant-based cuisine.

ROBIN ASBELL, author of Big Vegan, The New Vegetarian,and Juice It!

After reading Vegetarian Dinner Parties, I feel as if Ive traveled throughout the culinary universe armed with a pan and whisk, ready to tackle a sweeping selection of worldwide cuisines. The recipes are eclectic and exciting and after reading them, I just want to get into the kitchen to simmer, sear, and smoke! And yes, I want to be at their next dinner party.

STEVEN PETUSEVSKY, author of Sizzle and Smoke and The American Diabetes Association Vegetarian Cookbook

Mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities in this book does not imply endorsement by the author or publisher, nor does mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities imply that they endorse this book, its author, or the publisher.

Internet addresses and telephone numbers given in this book were accurate at the time it went to press.

2014 by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

Book design by Christina Gaugler

Photographs by Eric Medsker

Kamut is the registered trademark of Kamut brand khorasan wheat.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-60961-501-7 hardcover

ISBN-13: 978-1-60961-502-4 ebook

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T he culinary powers-that-be say dinner parties are staging a comeback. Pardon us if we snicker. Weve read that headline too often during the many years that weve been full-time food writers. Theres no comeback because there was never a go away. Good cooks have been having friends over for dinner all along. Whats better than a night at the table, a couple of bottles of wine, great camaraderie, and lots of laughs?

But since theres always room for improvement, wed like to raise the bar and make a plea for dinner parties like the ones that have long been a part of our lives together. At least once a month, we brush off the stemware, pull together a collection of recipes, and put on a plated affair. The meals pace is accomplished with discrete servings offered in several courses. The flavors are intense within a single dish, but each helping is small enough that your palate doesnt get exhausted before you move on to the next course. The cooking then becomes the canvas for the real masterpiece: a long, gorgeous evening together. Eyes sparkle in the candlelight. Time is measured in plates, not minutes. And people find themselves in the warmth of each others affections. So, okay, that sort of dinner party may well be due for a comeback.

Yes, we plate the courses. You neednt. We find it a beautiful experience, a chance to be artistic with food and to offer our friends a delicious present. Weve also become adept at certain tricks for throwing a successful dinner party; well want to share those with you. But almost every dish in this book could be set in the center of the table for a family-style meal. Just bring the roasting pan or big platter to the table and pour some more wine while everyone helps themselves.

However, we should also be honest about what this book doesnt have. We dont offer options for putting together a buffet. The courses dont do well jammed together on a single plate. They were developed to be focused and balancedin other words, to stand on their own. As youll see, the drama will happen between the platesthat is, both in the juxtaposition of one dish to the next and in the narrative arc of the longer meal, beginning to end. Dont worry: Well give you lots of help putting it all together. But its that arc, that movement between plates, that will create a memorable evening at your table.

And there are no side dishes here. For us, dinner parties are a way to re-create modern-day, four-star dining at home. When you arrive at one of these new French Laundryinspired restaurants, these critically acclaimed temples of cuisine, youre presented with a menu that offers the evenings flavors in small bits: a bowl of soup with gingered carrots and miso, a plate of cold-smoked romaine lettuce with a candied walnut dressing, another plate of pickled shiso leaves and caramelized shallots with a dusting of ground green tea. You spend your time moving from plate to plate, experience to experience. That is our vision of the dinner parties were about to lay out for you.

Lets face it: A vegetarian dinner party is not an everyday affair. And thats too bad. A vegetarian meal can be more satisfying than that big hunk of roasted meat that has held court on our tables for too long. So heres to an old-fashioned concept in a new-fashioned medium: the (truly) vegetarian (honest-to-God) dinner party.

Truly means no fakes. Were just not into tofurkey or fakin bacon. We dont need to be. Vegetables can carry the day without doing a meatish drag show. After writing 22 cookbooks and developing almost 12,000 original recipes, weve come to the countercultural conclusion that asparagus, morels, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peaches, pears, figs, and the rest of their plantish kin are more flavorful and offer more textural satisfaction than anything else in the lardermore than even the most ber-grass-fed, ber-grass-finished beef. A decade ago, our dinner parties were notorious for roasts; but our menus have shifted dramatically. These days, were more interested in expanding the taste and texture range at the table, moving away from the mostly savory flavors of a hunk of meat and into the sour, sweet, bitter, herbaeceous, and (yes) larger spectrum that fruits, vegetables, and grains provide. Over the course of hundreds of dinner parties, weve crafted vegetarian and vegan recipes that meet those demands and now make up this book.

Every writer has a hidden agenda. Heres ours: When we embrace the modern, fine-dining scheme of carefully crafted courses, we can begin to see vegetables for their true worth. Theyre no longer relegated to the rim of the plate, a lost mound of steamed greens or roasted potatoes. They become more than main-course handmaids, a position theyve held for too long in Western culture. No wonder so few of us understand that the produce section holds a more astounding array of culinary delights than the meat and fish cases combined. Were just not used to noticing vegetables, fruits, and grains. So its high time we liberated them to the center of the plate. Our dinner parties do that. Yours can, too.