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Oysters and Champagne is for my love of food and sharing with you.

Vegetarian dinner

This week saw us at a Quiz night. Sadly we only came second, but was fun nonetheless. Also sadly for those of who chose the vegetarian option it was not the greatest. It was called Falafel, which to the uninitiated , I would call a vegetarian meat ball, made with dried chick peas, onion and oodles of spices, garlic and herbs. Ours was indeed chick peas in a tomato sauce but that was it!

Inspired by this, I had in my refrigerator, stuff which should be used, namely celeriac and squash. So I amalgamated a couple of recipes and came up with a vegetarian dinner which was full of flavour, colour and texture.

To these I added garlic, yogurt, dates, butter, cream cheese, pomegranate molasses, chopped coriander , pistachio paste and fresh pomegranate seeds ( I say fresh as I had de-seeded a pomegranate the other day and flat frozen them).

This was a very much on the cuff recipe. I peeled the butternut squash, removed the seeds and sliced it. Put the slices into a baking dish, dotted with some butter and put into my oven ( fan at 170.

I wrapped the celeriac in Cling film and microwaved for about 7 minutes before cutting off the outer layer and slicing it and putting in the oven with the butternut squash.

I softened 250 grams Philadelphia cream cheese before I mushed it along with some plain home made yogurt and three or four cloves of smushed garlic!

I had about 125 grams of dried dates ( very old and very dried), soaked them in some boiling water, drained and dried them, ( in paper towel); chopped onto smallish bits ,before sautéing them in a knob of butter., and then put to one side.

When the squash and celeriac are soft, remove from the oven and put to cool.

Assembly, actually it can of course be done in any order but for the sake of aesthetics this is what I did.

  • Arrange the slices of celeriac and squash on a plate, leaving a circle free in the middle.
  • Into the circle, put the dollops of garlicky cream cheese.
  • Top the cream cheese with the dates.
  • Top it all with chopped coriander and pomegranate seeds.
  • Carefully pour over the pomegranate molasses and add some dashes of the pistachio paste.
  • A few extra additions could be some chopped pistachios and some chopped spring onions or even some chopped olives!

I bought my pistachio paste in France and of course it has additives, such as colouring. It is certainly not cheap to buy but there again, pistachios are also more expensive than most other nuts. It could be substantially cheaper however to make your own pistachio paste and it couldn’t simpler!

Simply buy some unsalted and not roasted pistachios. Blanch them for about 45 seconds in boiling water. Rub then in a dry the towel to remove any skins and leave them to dry thoroughly. When dry, tip them into a food processor and grind. The stages of grinding are Nuts>Crumbs>Powder>Paste! Add a few drops of good olive oil to make the paste easier to blend together and that is it !