Customizing strategies from "The Flexitarian Table"
"The Flexitarian Table" author Peter Berley offers these strategies for success in creating convertible menus to feed diners of varying protein preferences:
1. Choose a common vegetarian base that everyone will eat. This could be the main dish, or it could be the base for two different versions of the main dish, as with French lentils that Berley tops with either baked fish or ricotta dumplings.
Especially if you have two different proteins in your meal, keep the side dishes vegetarian. If you're cooking risotto, say, use vegetable broth, not chicken broth. "Two risottos — that's too much to make," said Berley.
2. Choose animal and vegetable proteins that share similar characteristics.
"Look at what you like; if you like duck, you have a feeling of the texture, the weight," Berley said. Then look for parallel qualities in your vegetable protein.
He often uses the chewy wheat-gluten product seitan for the vegetable counterpart to duck or lamb.
3. Find a common sauce or marinade. In one menu from the book, Berley tops soft polenta with white beans for the vegetarians, and shrimp for those who eat seafood; but he serves both shrimp and beans in a brown-butter and herb sauce.
"The sauce bridges the two proteins that go with the starch," he said. "It would be two distinct dishes if I didn't have the brown-butter sauce. It wouldn't be sharing the table."
4. Find a common cooking technique for the two proteins. Berley points to a menu organized around pressed chicken and tofu: Cooking chicken thighs under a brick in a cast-iron skillet produces "supremely crispy skin," he writes in his book, and "pressing the water out of the tofu results in a similar crispness."
Use the same marinade for both, though be sure to put it in two separate bowls.
5. To make vegetarian dishes more appealing to meat eaters, look for ways to deepen flavors: browning butter, toasting nuts and spices, caramelizing onions.
For foodie types who have a stovetop smoker, "smoking satisfies that Neanderthal instinct," Berley said. "You can smoke anything."
Or use smoked paprika, chipotles or smoked sea salt to flavor foods such as dry beans or green beans that are traditionally cooked with smoked pork in the South. And, Berley suggested, "a little soy sauce gives a meaty flavor."
Adaptable grilling
Even though summer may be the best time of year for cooking vegetarian, those who avoid meat often get short shrift at grill-outs because hosts often don't think beyond burgers, hot dogs and chicken.
"Grilling fish is obvious," Berley said, especially if your guests are the kind of demi-vegetarians who will eat seafood. But he points out that "pizza is the most popular vegetarian meal in the world."
And easy to grill.
"You just throw your dough on the grill, or par-bake it maybe two minutes, or in a fry pan, so it's easier to manage and handle" on the grill. "Grilled vegetables are not a meal," he said. "Grilled pizzas are." *
1. Choose a common vegetarian base that everyone will eat. This could be the main dish, or it could be the base for two different versions of the main dish, as with French lentils that Berley tops with either baked fish or ricotta dumplings.
Especially if you have two different proteins in your meal, keep the side dishes vegetarian. If you're cooking risotto, say, use vegetable broth, not chicken broth. "Two risottos — that's too much to make," said Berley.
2. Choose animal and vegetable proteins that share similar characteristics.
"Look at what you like; if you like duck, you have a feeling of the texture, the weight," Berley said. Then look for parallel qualities in your vegetable protein.
He often uses the chewy wheat-gluten product seitan for the vegetable counterpart to duck or lamb.
3. Find a common sauce or marinade. In one menu from the book, Berley tops soft polenta with white beans for the vegetarians, and shrimp for those who eat seafood; but he serves both shrimp and beans in a brown-butter and herb sauce.
"The sauce bridges the two proteins that go with the starch," he said. "It would be two distinct dishes if I didn't have the brown-butter sauce. It wouldn't be sharing the table."
4. Find a common cooking technique for the two proteins. Berley points to a menu organized around pressed chicken and tofu: Cooking chicken thighs under a brick in a cast-iron skillet produces "supremely crispy skin," he writes in his book, and "pressing the water out of the tofu results in a similar crispness."
Use the same marinade for both, though be sure to put it in two separate bowls.
5. To make vegetarian dishes more appealing to meat eaters, look for ways to deepen flavors: browning butter, toasting nuts and spices, caramelizing onions.
For foodie types who have a stovetop smoker, "smoking satisfies that Neanderthal instinct," Berley said. "You can smoke anything."
Or use smoked paprika, chipotles or smoked sea salt to flavor foods such as dry beans or green beans that are traditionally cooked with smoked pork in the South. And, Berley suggested, "a little soy sauce gives a meaty flavor."
Adaptable grilling
Even though summer may be the best time of year for cooking vegetarian, those who avoid meat often get short shrift at grill-outs because hosts often don't think beyond burgers, hot dogs and chicken.
"Grilling fish is obvious," Berley said, especially if your guests are the kind of demi-vegetarians who will eat seafood. But he points out that "pizza is the most popular vegetarian meal in the world."
And easy to grill.
"You just throw your dough on the grill, or par-bake it maybe two minutes, or in a fry pan, so it's easier to manage and handle" on the grill. "Grilled vegetables are not a meal," he said. "Grilled pizzas are." *
