The Sacred Art of Eating

A three course meal for a vegetarian friend….oh heck, no, marshmallows ain’t veggie…

• Red Pepper Hummus
• Sweetcorn Chowder with Toasted Tortillas
• (Slow Roasted Tomatoes, Goat’s Cheese and Mint Salad)

So yes, this would have been a three course meal, but about an hour and a half before our guests arrived I remembered that marshmallows aren’t vegetarian. You’ll have to wait and see (as will we!) to hear how the Instant Chocolate Mousse I’d had planned goes down.

The red pepper hummus was our starter, and I served it with standard cruditée accompaniments; thin slices of red and yellow pepper, fine green beans and batons of cucumber. As by then I knew the pudding was going nowhere, I added some wedges of freshly toasted pitta bread. I wasn’t as excited by this as I’d expected to be; home made hummus can taste really fantastic! Either it wasn’t peppery enough (because I’d had to combine two jars and couldn’t therefore just drain off the oil but had to decide what proportion of a jar constituted enough extra pepper) or it was because I used red and yellow peppers not just red. Or perhaps I didn’t squeeze on quite enough lime juice, to lift it up. Either way, whilst it was entirely pleasant and rather lovely to look at, it didn’t push all my buttons.

However, I followed it up with our first definite success from the soups in the book. The sweetcorn chowder, essentially pulped sweetcorn, garlic and spring onion cooked up in vegetable stock was blinding, in no little part because of its topping of cheesey toasted tortilla chips and chilli. It looked gorgeous, even in the absence of arty earthenware bowls, and was warm and filling. A little too warm; we all burned our mouths!

I accompanied the soup with a big plate of the Slow Roasted Tomatoes, Goat’s Cheese and Mint Salad. It was every bit as lovely as when I made it back at the beginning of the challenge. I am definitely a fan. We saved pudding (or, more accurately, the lack thereof) by serving the remaining Banana Butterscotch /Chocolate Chip muffins (this was the day after we’d made them). Most respectable and an excellent end to the meal.