Monday 10 December 2012

MENU FOR A VEGETARIAN PARTY

It's not easy to go through collections of recipes and try to put together a combination of dishes that you think will work well together. You'll try to make sure that each element is compatible but not staid, that the quantity is sufficient but not superfluous and that the effort won't kill you or leave you too cranky to enjoy your own party.

To make your life easier I've decided to put together pre-tested menus for various circumstances. I'll set out a menu (that you can copy and print if you're really fancy =)) and a description of each dish. Through the course of the week I'll provide you with a recipe from the menu. If you're in a rush or your party is before the week ends you can drop me an email and I'll even ship you the rest of the recipes early!

I'm inaugurating this exercise with a vegetarian menu for a sit down lunch or dinner.


For this menu, I wanted to make sure that we had a substantial representation of green vegetables, because it's healther and to make sure selection of dishes didn't sink into familiar, heavy potato/paneer territory. Vegetarian food has so many flavour options that aren't explored and using paneer in curries meant for meat dishes is just not doing a long suffering vegetarian enough justice.


1. Lightly Spiced Cucumber, Peas and Mint - Cooked cucumber is delicious and totally new to me! This is a lovely, light, summery flavoured dish which is very easy to put together and keeps the menu from weighing you down with too many too rich ingredients.

2. Coconut and Chilli Okra - With a little tamarind, this almost south Indian seeming (and perhaps it's genesis lies in the south of India) coconut and chilli okra is a refreshing interpretation of the common fried bhindi.

3. Golden Fried Spicy Potatoes - A variation on the Dum Aloo these potatoes are drier but add appropriate heft and spice to the menu.

4. Dal Makhani - Don't be intimidated by the inclusion of Dal Makhani on this list! My version is as warm and creamy as the recipes that require days of cooking but with the help of your handy dandy pressure cooker will leave you enough time to get your (vegetarian) party on!

5. Saffron Pulao - An appropriately comforting canvas to set the rest of the exciting menu items against.
 

4 comments:

radha said...

Interesting. What about the dessert?

Yashasvini said...

I got carried away with the Vegetarian cooking and then didn't have space left for dessert *embarrassed*

Anonymous said...

Where's the actual food? Huh? What?

B.I. Sonyan, Kathmandu

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