Tuesday 19 October 2010

Last Night's Vegetarian Feast Night Formal Hall

Why eat a Vegetarian diet?
  • Research shows that vegetarians are at lower risk for heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, colon cancer, and prostate cancer. Vegetarian diets might also protect against diverticular disease and gallstones.
  • The UK’s Food Climate Research Network suggests that food production from farm to fork is responsible for between 20-30 percent of global green house gas emissions.
    Livestock production is responsible for around half of these emissions. The more meat we produce and eat the bigger that carbon footprint will get. A sustainable future demands that we cut down - and yet between 1961 and 2007 the world population increased by a factor of 2.2, but meat consumption quadrupled, and poultry consumption increased 10-fold.
Last night marked the beginning of our initiative to promote vegetarian food as an alternative to meat and fish. As you can see from above, there are several reasons why a vegetarian diet makes sense; lower co2 emmisions, less saturated fat, lower risk of disease. Each of these arguments are valid, but what I really want to promote, is the great variety of vegetarian recipes and dishes our kitchen produces.
 We recently bought two great vegetarian cookbooks, Pure Vegetarian by Paul Gayler, and Terre a Terre by Amanda Powley.
Both of these books are full of exciting and interesting recipes. Terre a Terre is actually the name of a great vegetarian restaurant in Brighton, and Pure Vegetarian won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award.
Last nights menu featured two recipes from Pure Vegetarian, beginning with roasted pepper passata with basil yoghurt and tomato tartare. Passata is made from ripe tomatoes that have been puréed and sieved to remove the skin and seeds. It is sold in jars and can be smooth or chunky depending on the sieving. We served ours warm with some the lovely garnishes.
 Next up, we served a silky smooth lime and mint sorbet. All our sorbets and ice creams are made using the amazing Pacojet machine we purchased last year.
Used as a sorbet and ice cream maker, Pacojet produces an end product of the highest quality when using only fresh, natural ingredients. No Preservatives, additives, stabilizers nor taste enhancers (commonly found in commercially-available mixes) are needed.
 Our main course featured a Kerala pumpkin curry with cinnamon rice and beetroot raita. This colourful dish originates from Kerala, a state in India. It is located on the south-western region of the country.
 For the sweet, we served a lovely green pistachio cake with strawberry ice cream. We use only the best 'super green' pistachios when making this great cake!
I hope that everyone who dined last night enjoyed the unique vegetarian menu!

Bon Appetite!

4 comments:

  1. Looks great, and so wonderful to see what you're doing to offer even more delicious vegetarian options than Pembroke always does :) Wish I could've been there!

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  2. I'm so glad to see Pembroke doing Meatless Mondays! I really loved the sweets and passata, thanks for promoting vegetarianism :D

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  3. Promoting vegetarianism? More like enforcing. I'm massively disappointed to find out my birthday is a Monday next year.

    I propose a reversal to the normal situation on Mondays - opt in for a meat version of the vegetarian main meal!

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  4. We recently experimented with 'Vegetarian Night' in our very own homage to the Pembroke Kitchens. At the outset, I was interested to see how we'd survive without the meat component of our meals and scheduled in a very nice-looking Courgette and Parmesan Tart.

    Alas, I'm afraid to report that the customer reaction wasn't good. We even had a breakaway group cooking unadorned pork escalopes to throw on top of the tart. So despite the most appetising of menus, I'm afraid there are some who'll always say no-thanks if there's no meat.

    We have the added complication of a pair of severe mushroom-haters, so making meat substitutions to satisfy them is all the more difficult...

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