So my wife wants to have a seder and invite a couple over who are almost vegan - they do eat some dairy products, but no egg.
She also wants to invite another couple who are major carnivores.
I'm dah chef. Dah menu:
1. Spring vegetable soup. I start with homemade veggie stock. Saute onion, leek, fennel bulb, celery, carrot, garlic in EVOO, add tomato puree to intensify and slight caramelize. Then zucchini, yellow squash, chayote. Add stock and home canned San Marzanos. Simmer a short while and take off heat, add thyme, salt and pepper. Later, add chopped chard leaves and fresh oregano. Heat through to cook chard just before serving. Top each bowl with dollop of pureed basil in EVOO, Olio Nuovo, and Reggiano.
2. Rosti potatoes made with veggie-enzyme cheeses, topped with watercress. Thick asparagus finished in lemon butter. Wild rice with porcini cream sauce.
3. Farfel-stuffed yellow peppers with Spanish roasted tomato-almond sauce. This last dish traces its influience to some old sephardic heritage. Farfel stuffing includes butter-sauteed onion, celery, leek and mushroom, thyme, Jerez-Amontillado cooked off, add the farfel and mix in just enough veggie stock to lightly moisten the farfel. It will later cook. This is stuffed into yellow peppers and recapped.
The sauce starts with sauteed onion, garlic, celery, leek, in EVOO, saffron, marcona almonds, S&P, white wine, juice from the preserved San Marzanos, and smoky paprika. More tomatoes and garlic cloves go into the dutch oven, onto which is poured the mixture from the saute pan. The stuffed peppers are pushed into mixture and baked, partially covered in medium oven for ~75 minutes, essentially a braise that concentrates and slightly roasts the tomato mixture as the peppers soften and slightly darken.
The peppers are removed and the sauce is pureed in a blender with juice of one blood orange. This all was chilled overnight and reheated the next day - peppers in the microwave, sauce on stove top. This dish was real yummy and 100% vegan.
The carnivores were satisfied.
