Vegetarian Dinner Parties: 150 meatless meals good enough to serve company. Bruce Weinstein, Mark Scarbrough, 2014. Published by Rodale Press.
Their beautiful images are evocative of chiaroscuro paintings. The plates are wonderfully playful and appealing, and the text is informative and really entertaining. For publisher Rodale, Vegetarian Dinner Parties by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, has to be a classic; for both vegetarian and vegan readers—if your urban lifestyle borrows heavily from rustic elegance—the featured fresh and in-season, even occasionally frozen or canned, fruits and vegetables offer even the most sophisticated guest an unexpected treat.
Here’s a cooking and serving style which really highlights the main ingredients and doesn’t assume fancy methods or secret ingredients. The plates are not a sort of kitchen magic that only chefs can achieve. Their style is part California-modern and part attention to seasonal ingredients, wherever you are located, even if you don’t live and cook in New England (or California for that matter). The authors constantly refer to the seasons and their affect on choice of recipes for your special dinner, or a week-night after work, as they say.
Aren’t recipe titles meant to be seductive, alluring? Here almost every plate is named with one chic and one familiar ingredient, paired at least in name to create a sensation just by reading about it. My favorites are delights promised as “Tomato gelee, pistachio shortbread”, “Beets, avocados, capers”, “Roast pear, fig caponata”, “Miso soup, celery root, rye berries”, “Drunken spaghetti, pine nuts, parsley”, “Baked macaroni, mushrooms, cashews”.
Note that each title is sweet and concise. The recipes, too, are direct and simple, including a sidebar with extra help, such as suggestions on what else to serve on such an occasion with the gelee, for example. If you are going to serve the tomato gelee, then a soup or salad, followed by fondue, the final plate will have to be bourbon and dark chocolate. I find the menus combine vegan and vegetarian plates; these are merely proposed, after all, and such a balanced combination might be just right for many diners. There are hints, under subheads like “Ahead”, “More”, “Notes” and a simple suggestion for wines to combine with the plates. It’s all very correct and helpful, not a bit less or more so than any book by these authors might be, since they are, at their day jobs, and professionally, food writers.
The book is arranged by plates in order of size—beginning with “No Plates”, progressing to “Small Plates”, then Pasta, Soup and Salad, “Large Plates”, and for dessert, “Final Plates”. Showering glamour over evening, your hosts appear to be very well-organized, and dinner parties should be, if they are carried off well. All this goes to say there’s a protocol of sorts to be followed, from menu planning to guest reception and in making your party feel as relaxed as possible, so that the intent of really showcasing the food comes through.
See Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough online as they explain their very thoughtful approach to delectable dinner parties.
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