The Perfect Vegan Dinner Party

 Creating a dinner party is hard. Creating a vegan dinner party is even harder?Or is it. All you need is a good main course , sides and a show stopping dessert. Can it be perfect for those avoiding meat? Yes!!!

Regular contributor Dasvid Tanis created this in yesterday's New York Times Wednesday Food section. The most problematic question is what makes for a good main course? You can't have roasts or anything like cutlets.Mr. Tanis turned to Italy for inspiration. He has come up with a polenta and  roasted mushroom torta. This is a layered casserole, baked in a spring form pan that's usually reserved for cheesecakes. Creamy cheese such as mozzarella.Parmesan and Gorgonzola(you could use vegan cheeses if you want - just research their baking times). Roasted mushrooms and a bright green gemolata cover it. Keep in mind that the polenta should be made several hours  or even a day in advance to allow it to firm up.when it's ready spoon into the buttered spring form pan and then layer on the cheese.Bake on the oven's middle rack for forty-five minutes in a  350 degree Farenheit oven. Turn the heat up ten minutes until the cheese is brown and bubbly, Take out of the oven and set aside.The mushrooms are first pan sauteed in olive oil and then season with salt and pepper. Roast them and at the same time reheat the torta Make the gremolata  by combining parsley , lemon garlic and crushed red pepper. Add the roasted mushrooms and serve with the polenta.

Since this is such a big flavored dish, the salad with it should be mild.Try a radicchio salad with walnuts and the fruit of the season -pears. Use ruby red radicchio along with brown sugared walnuts. Its creating a buttery caramel sauce by cooking butter and brown sugar. It will turn into a syrup. and then add the walnuts. Cook until nuts are fragrant.The dressing is a mix of two vinegars -red and balsamic, walnut oil and olive oil.Mix the greens ,walnuts and sliced pears together.what makes for a good dessert? Try homemade chocolate amaretti cookies. These are a simple bake using cocoa, egg  whites. and a dash of almond extract. The texture is like crinkle cookies. Three large egg whites are used and they're they only liquid involved. The rest is dark Dutch cocoa and almond flour.This last and the almond extract blend well with the cocoa.Once the dough is made they're pinched into walnut sized balls and then rolled first in granulated sugar and then powdered sugar. A blanched almond is pushed into their middles and they're baked on parchment in a 325 degree Farenheit oven for fifteen to twenty minutes The dough will be sticky at first but the two sugars should remedy that. You can end with a dessert wine or a good espresso.

A vegetarian dinner possible rich with good food is possible. This is a great dinner for a SUnday or for a weekend dinner party. There's no meat yet its still tasty and filling.

The Marriage Of Easter And Passover

Without Passover , there would be no Easter. Both holidays and holy days are linked , along with having much in common, Both are rich in symbolic foods that define them. There are savory and sweet , recipes that go back centuries and even millennia.

Famed chef and food writer, Yotam Ottolenghi, wrote about these entwined holidays in today's New York Times Food section.The similarities of the two Spring holidays struck him a couple of years ago when he and his then two year old son, Max, went on their first Easter egg hunt in London. The feeling of triumph of finding a chocolate egg was not unlike that of finding the afikoman - the piece of matzoh that is hidden during a seder and found by the children attending the dinner. He then saw similar symbolism with certain dishes. The English bake a simmel cake - a fragrant spice-laden fruit cake that always has twelve marzipan balls on it to represent Jesus and the eleven apostles -  not twelve because Judas is omitted. Chef. Ottolenghi compares the cake's fruit drenched crumb to his nonna's haroseth,, another symbol rich food. The paste, meant to symbolize the mortar the Jews used to build the pyramids also has dried fruit and dusted with spice, namely cinnamon. Both Jews and Christians also make lamb which signifies  Abraham's sacrificing his son and Christ sacrificing His Life.

The holidays can be entwined and Chef Ottolenghi writes of braiding the two together. He offers two recipes, One is truly Neopolitan, a casatiello, and would be better after Passover. This bread is a great way of using the leftovers from the Easter meal and is brought on many an Easter Monday picnic all over Southern Italy.It combines salami, Gruyere and parmesan cheeses baked together with hard boiled eggs.(you can use your Easter eggs for this). All of this is neatly contained in a hearty bread.The bread dough is rolled out and then the cubed salami and cheeses along with a paste made of parsley and basil are spread out on it. The bread is then rolled and baked in a tubed pan. You don't even need a picnic for it. It's just a nice Spring dinner or Sunday brunch. The second recipe is one for Passover (although it, too, can be made at any time of the year) This  is a flourless walnut cake with the walnuts being ground into a flour. They do require what Chef Ottolenghi call a pre-emptive drenching which can be in  floral or citrus sugar syrup for some kind of moisture. His favorite is a nutty liqueur such as amaretto to give the cake kick.It's decorated with freshly whipped cream and caramelized salted walnuts.

Passover and Easter  have been and will always be entwined. Their foods too, for all their differences will be that way too. Both can be made and used in observing the coming of Spring and new life.