Friday night I had friends over for dinner (this is not the same as a dinner party for reasons that are too complicated to get into).  The Dinner Impossible challenge: two guests were vegetarian, one would only eat fish, and another gets stomach aches from spicy food. I also wanted to accomplish the entire meal in only two hours of cooking time, and spending less than $50.

Because of the two vegetarians, I decided to use asian vegetables and flavors in pulling together most of the meal.  I can’t stand vegetarian menus that sacrifice flavor in the hope of simulating meat.  There’s a restaurant near my house that boasts of their ability to do this, but I think most of it turns out poorly and I’d take an ethnic restaurant that uses veggies or tofu instead of animal proteins any day.

The menu in brief, with more details below:

• Course 1: Kale and Lime Soup
• Course 2: Asian Stuffed Cremini Mushroom and Sauteed Portabello
• Course 3: Vegetable or Salmon Stir Fry
• Course 4: HomeMade Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream with Fresh Chocolate Chip Cookie

Course One: I wanted a simple, vegetarian soup that I could make without much effort.  I thought about a mushroom soup, which I have some experience with, but decided that later courses would already have too many mushrooms, and this wasn’t Iron Chef.  Instead, I opted for a Kale and Lime Soup from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, garnished with a slice of lime.  It generally got positive reviews, though my guests thought it could have used some more kick.  Unfortunately, I left out the jalepeno from the recipe which may have solved this some.

Course Two: Mushrooms make great appetizers and cook quick, but most stuffed mushroom recipes use cheese and italian flavors, which didn’t fit in will with the rest of the menu.  I modified this recipe for Asian Stuffed Mushrooms from Eupicurian instead, using medium-sized White Mushrooms replacing the peppers (which I didn’t have) with carrots and changing around the ratios for the other ingredients which seem more like guidelines than rules.  I popped them in the oven when I served the soup and served each guest one mushroom garnished with two slices of sauteed portabello.

Course Three: For the entree, I made a stir fry, starting by heating the aromatics (garlic and ginger) in oil, then stirring in the slower cooking ingredients (onions, broccoli, zuchini), some leafy vegetables (bok choi, scallions), adding some liquid (a stir fry sauce I found at the grocery store), and cooking for a few more minutes.  It would have gone great with a side of rice, but a friend brought Pasta Salad so I didn’t think we needed more starch.  For the carnivores in the room, I quickly sauteed a piece of salmon in a separate pan to toss on the stir fry.

Course Four: By far my strongest course was the dessert, shown below.  Before anyone came over, I made homemade Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream and chocolate chip cookies, which combined took about 10 minutes of work.  I put the ice cream in the freezer to harden and served each in a cup with a cookie, a sprig of mint from my herb garden, and slice of cake courtesy of my guests.

Home Made Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

My ice cream maker has quickly become my favorite kitchen appliance.  Making ice cream is fast, easy, and tastes orders of magnitude better than anything in a store.  Plus, the ingredients tend to keep for a few weeks, so I can leave them in the fridge/pantry without worrying about them going bad.

Categories: Food
1 Comment »