Feeling Fancy: Five Courses of Vegan Love

Special occasions usually seem to call for dinners out, but sometimes it can be fun and more personal to stay in. I especially wanted to come up with a memorably romantic dinner for my partner this week as we celebrated the seven years we've been together through thick, thin, sick, health, grad school...twice... and everything else. Since the time around our actual anniversary was spent in the service of baking and the day itself was consumed by serving cookies, biscotti, crisps, bars, cupcakes, muffins and cake, like the one pictured below, to thousands and thousands of people at the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival we agreed to reschedule our own celebration for the next week. Because really, what's seven days when you've already put in seven years?



This cake picture, incidentally, is pretty much the only picture I have from the festival, which goes to show how crazy it was... I mean to prevent me from taking pictures? The thought that I missed out on prime frosting macros, especially of the glorious caramel buttercream I made...it breaks me. The cake above however I did manage to take a picture of just before we sliced it up and passed it around. It was a chocolate hazelnut cake with a hazelnut milk ganache in the middle and vanilla bean buttercream on top. I wrapped it in a thin layer of chocolate that was melted on a chocolate transfer sheet to get the cool orange swirl pattern on it.

After making all this food for other people on what was actually my anniversary, I thought it would be good to cook up some love for two on our fauxniversary. Making a fancy meal to express your love for someone/s can seem daunting because the food you make is a gift and like all gifts that you make yourself rather than just buy outright, it's very personal and meaningful. It's also daunting to think of making a dinner that can be served without distraction, that is, without you running constantly over to the stove or assembling something before every course. Now, I'm not Dr. Love or Martha Stewart, but I have some suggestions for making a memorable, low-stress, delectable dinner that says I've got love for you.



I started our meal by putting out some mixed Spanish olives along with slices of a small baguette served to sop up the fresh herb-infused Spanish olive oil that I poured over the olives. The Spanish theme was a conscious choice intended to reference our recent trip to Barcelona. Picking food or ingredients that call up a shared experience, time, or memory welcomes reminiscing and makes emotion and consciousness a significant part of the meal.

In addition to calling up our time in Spain, the olives served another function. For multi-course meals, it can be useful to have a small starter that doesn't take much effort to prepare or set up and that can stay out on the table while you eat. Not only can a light starter take up the time while a first course warms up, but it serves as a nice filler throughout the meal as well. It can really help slow things down and keep the tone chill too if instead of running to get the next dish and making the dinner feel like it's on some specific schedule, you break off a bit of bread, have an olive or two, sip a drink, and talk until you're motivated to get the next thing out on the table. Slowly unveiling the dinner and letting it take hours to unfold can be a particular pleasure.



Soup is a great element to add to a multi-course meal. It's particularly helpful that it can be prepared completely ahead of time, and in fact is usually even better when it's had a chance to sit and develop a deeper, more coherent flavor. Elegance is easy to come by with soup too. Serve it from an unexpected vessel like a beautiful cocktail glass or a stemmed sorbet cup like the one above, add an unusual flourish to the top--it could be as simple as some fresh chopped herbs, as dramatic as a brightly colored swirl of puréed vegetable, or a striking infusion like the vegan cocoa nib infused cream that topped this roasted shallot and butternut squash soup.



Derived from Alice Medrich's brilliant book Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate, this soup ended up being a star of the meal. It was easy to veganize and made great use of a lovely butternut squash from our CSA. Taking a tip from Bazu, I was already thinking about simple and seasonal roasted vegetables that are easily elevated by the addition of shallots which caramelize in the oven and shoot the accompanying veggie through with sweet, rich, earthy flavor. This soup starts with those vegetables and builds even more flavor with the addition of some fresh herbs and a homemade vegetable stock. The cocoa nib cream garnish is just a further stroke of genius. There's the lightest chocolate flavor that is actually second to a stronger, earthier flavor that comes off more like a truffle (of the mushroom variety, not the confection) and is a wonderful complement to the sweetness of the squash and the caramel tones of the roasted shallots. I used Soyatoo for the cream, but there are a variety of vegan heavy creams on the market these days, including Alpro and Oat Supreme. Or you can make your own substitution with soy milk thickened with soy milk powder, soy yogurt, coconut cream, etc., depending on the demands of the dish.



Following the soup we had this salad, featuring radicchio and butter lettuce, a balance of bitter and sweet that is furthered by the addition of fresh slices of pear and apple, toasted walnuts and a tangy balsamic vinaigrette. The choice of sturdy "greens" (recognizing that radicchio is in fact purple) meant that I could dress and plate the salad in advance and just set it out on the table when we were ready for it. Picking out dishes that share ingredients and preparations is a big time saver too. Knowing that I was going to make use of walnuts in the pasta later, I toasted enough for the main dish and the salad all the same time.



Following the salad we had a slightly modified version of the Sherry and Sage Spuds that Marleigh recommended from Hot Knives. In their notes, they say that this dish will "put you down like a bong rip through apple cider." I have no idea what that means, but it sounded like an experience. The preparation was really quick and the potatoes were happy enough to hang out in their cast iron pot warming in the oven at 200 degrees until we were ready for them. Preparing the sauce ahead of time and keeping it cool in the fridge meant that it was as simple as dotting the plate with some sauce and piling some of the beautiful tiny purple Peruvian potatoes on the plate to

I spent some time looking for these purple potatoes to reference our trip to Peru last year where we saw and ate tons of different kinds of potatoes, some of which only grow on very specific terraces in very specific locations in Peru. They were a perfect choice too, sweet and soft, and with the fried sage cream sauce, they were out of control good. The sauce was a gamble for me, but one that paid off. I can usually take or leave Veganaise and mayonnaise type things in general, but though it is the base of this sauce, it's completely transformed by the sage infused oil. I definitely plan to experiment with this more, infusing oil with herbs and spices to mix into faux-mayonnaise to spread on sandwiches or serve with vegetables.

A quick note on my changes for this recipe: I used double the garlic called for and substituted rice vinegar for the sherry vinegar, which I didn't have, and it worked out quite nicely.



Blame it on a love and admiration-addled brain, but I somehow missed photographing the main course, which was a pasta dish with fresh egg-free parpadelle, a wide flat noodle, featuring these great local mushrooms that Steve, the farmer who runs our CSA, foraged for. I sautéed the mushrooms with garlic, olive oil and white wine and then added some arugula to the hot pan and let it wilt. Tossed with the fresh pasta and toasted walnuts, it was light but satisfying, simple but complexly flavored with all of the ingredients really coming through. It came together very quickly too and when it came time to eat it, I just pulled it off the low warming heat I had it on and piled some on a plate to share.



As anyone who has ever even looked at this blog will know (I sometimes feel a little bit ashamed of my tag cloud, which might just as well read CHOCOLATE), I was highly concerned with what to make for dessert. Marleigh came to the rescue with the suggestion of this double chocolate fig slice with brown sugar cream . It immediately captured my imagination, obviously...chocolate and figs? yes, please... and I set to work on veganizing it (my recipe is below). The result was an incredibly rich, super chocolately and decadent dessert with a great light crunch from the figs and a softly alcoholic tang from the marsala that helped it from getting too bogged down by the buttery chocolate intensity. It's like an insane sort of ultra-sophisticated brownie, and with a recommendation like that, how can you not try it?



The recipe calls for a brown sugar whipped cream to top the dessert, so I used the remaining Soyatoo from the cocoa nib cream on the soup and whipped it up with dark brown sugar. The sugar dissolves and turns the cream a beautiful creamy tan color and gives it more flavor and dimension, which helps take away the soy taste of the cream. This is the perfect kind of thing for fall desserts like apple crisps, pumpkin pies, and anything chocolate for sure.



So, all in all a fun and delicious meal that had me working with some new ideas and old favorites. It is generally a good idea to not go too crazy with completely new dishes or super fancy food that you and the people or person you're cooking for wouldn't normally eat when planning a special meal. Look for ways to elevate or make a twist on favorites rather than investing in a direction that you may not even like and which may be really challenging and may not be worth it.

When you're getting ready to make a multi-course meal for a special occasion, think about ways you can make something that will not only not stress you out, but will make you happy. Give yourself the time you need or scale back your plans to fit the time you have. Prioritizing dishes can be helpful, so that if, for example, you realize that you will not have time to finish everything you set out for yourself, you can just cross one thing off your list and still have an great meal to serve since you focused on the key dishes first. Have a strategy that will keep you where you belong, with your loved ones, rather than running back and forth to the kitchen all the time. You can invite your dinner partner to help finish a dish or do the final preparations on something and then share in the joy of the food and each other's company.

Double Chocolate Marsala Soaked Fig Cake

approximately 25 small dried black Mission figs (about 1 ½ cup)
½ cup Marsala wine
½ cup Earth Balance buttery stick, or other vegan margarine
7 oz. chopped chocolate, 60-70%
1 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons soy yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
¾ unbleached all-purpose flour
¼ cocoa powder
2 tablespoons corn starch
¾ baking powder
¼ salt

1. Preheat oven to 350° and line a 8x8 pan with parchment paper, leaving overhang on two sides to give you a "handle" to remove the cake.

2.Gently heat the Marsala wine in a saucepan. While it warms, finely chop the figs. Stir the chopped figs into the warm wine, cover pan and remove from heat.

3. Bring a half full pot of water to a low boil. Gently set another pot filled with the chocolate and butter in a the hot water. Stir until they have both melted and are smooth. Stir the sugar, yogurt, and vanilla into the melted chocolate mixture. When mixed smooth, set aside for 5 minutes to cool.

4. In a separate bowl, sift dry ingredients together.

5. Mix dry ingredients and the chocolate mixture together until smooth, fold in the Marsala and figs, then spread the mixture into the prepared pan. Bake for 35 minutes. The edges should be set but a toothpick will come out of the centre slightly sticky. Let it cool in the pan on a baking rack. When cool, use the parchment to remove it from the pan. Cut and serve immediately or wrap in plastic to store.

To serve: warm the cake in the microwave for 20 seconds and then top with ½ cup Soyatoo whipped with 2 tablespoons of brown sugar.