Tuesday 23 November 2010

Last Night's Vegetarian Feast Night Formal Hall

Last Monday we sold ZERO tickets for our weekly veggie formal; this week we sold over 70 (with an additional 30 Fellow's dining at High Table)! Does this mean that our students are embracing a more sustainable vegetarian diet, or was this week's brilliant attendance, simply a fluke?
Either way, it was nice to know the Hall was nearly full and the Chefs kept busy! We began last night's dinner with an amuse bouche of marinated olives, sun-blushed tomatoes and toasted ciabatta bread. Sun-blushed tomatoes are halfway toward being sundried; they’re juicier and fruitier, but still fantastically rich in flavour.
Next up, we served homemade tortellini filled with Gorgonzola cheese and walnuts. The pasta was served swimming in a rich onion broth, similar to a French onion soup.
For the main course, we served Portobello mushrooms on hazelnut pastry, topped with fontina cheese and accompanied by spinach and new potatoes.
Dessert featured roasted pear with milk puree, croissant ice cream and rum jelly.
Bon Appetite!

5 comments:

  1. It was a fluke. A society randomly chose Monday to have Formal at Pembroke, making up well over half of the attendence. One wonders if they even knew it was vegetarian when they did so.

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  2. The society was told in advance that the dinner would be vegetarian, it would have been remiss of me not to have informed them.

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  3. Fair enough. To be honest I'm still not a fan of Vegetarian Mondays (and second an earlier suggestion to have opt-in meat alternatives), but was pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago and hope to be again at Vegetarian Christmas Formal. :)

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  4. Thanks Alex for your comments, although I don't see the difference between allowing an opt-in meat option on Mondays, and what we currently offer the rest of the week; it's exactly the same, but with the options reversed;-)
    Anyhow, I do hope you enjoy the veggie Christmas Formal!

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  5. The reasons for Monday night formal becoming vegetarian passed me by somewhat (was there an e-mail or a blog post about it?), but I think it's a great idea. Aside from the animal rights side of vegetarianism, there are huge savings in CO2 emissions to be made by taking animals out of the food chain. Only a fraction of the energy in crops fed to animals is actually recovered in the meat, it is much more efficient to eat the crops directly. If everyone in the UK was vegetarian on one day per week, the CO2 savings would be equivalent to taking 5 million cars off the road apparently:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bU8Gg6mRiU

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