I often have a bit of a panic attack when vegetarian friends come around because on special occasions … catering occasions … we generally eat meat.

But now (as you know) I have discovered Yotam Ottolenghi – who is, surely,  every vegetarian with taste buds’ best buddy.

What I like is that his dishes make you feel like you have eaten a meal.  Which is often my beef (haha! – hmmm sad, sorry) with vego food.  They’ve got enough complexity of flavour so you feel like you’ve eaten something interesting.  And delicious. And substantial.

 Most recently I made lunch for friends and we had the (now) old standard roast pumpkin and red onion salad with tahini dressing.  I didn’t put nuts on it this time.  You can find the recipe here.  And a new (to me) dish of lentils with semi dried tomatoes and gorganzola.  You can find the recipe here.  And for the non vegos (um me) fish kofta, with grilled peppers and beetroot relish.  So a dish that was 2/3 vego, 1/3 fish.  You can find this recipe here.

And I forgot our visitors were coming so I dashed to the shops at 9am and bought all the ingredients (our cupboards were bare) and cooked all this in 2 hours.  It was tight.  But India helped out with the tahini dressing and the beetroot relish.

And I can recommend each of these three dishes. MThey were all super.

We were so full by the end.  And we only ate half of what I made.  So we had to invite the neighbours over for tea to help finish it off.

Oh, I LOVE Melbourne when it 25 degrees and you can sit outside ALL DAY!  Stay forever nice weather!