Dinner party food advice needed! Vegetarian menu.

[XBenedict]

OK so DH has invited 6 colleagues for dinner next month. I don't mind hosting dinner parties as a rule, in fact I quite enjoy it but I have never done a vegetarian menu.

What are you vegetarian show off easy dinner party dishes?

I tend to do curry. A big saucey mixed veg, Dahl, and a dry Bombay potato or aubergine curry. Nan, rice, salad, all can be prepared beforehand too so it's really easy.

Or take a look at the Ottolenghi thread, 3/4 of their big salads would go down really well with flatbread perhaps?

Or Thai - make my own paste, do a green veg curry, with some stir fried or deep fried tofu, buy lots of sides like mini spring rolls.

Or I do veggie lasagne. Which maybe doesn't sound dinner party-ish but DH hates lasagne and I love it do it's the only time I get to cook it

Mmmm spinach and ricotta cannelloni or mediterranean veg tartlets. I'm hungry now!

My show-off easy dinner party piece looks and tastes exquisite but is very little work - I may have even got the recipe off a previous mumsnet thread but I no longer recall where I first found it...

Per person:
One large portobello mushroom
A square of ready-rolled puff pastry, about 1.5 times the size of the diameter of the mushroom.
A couple of tablespoons of brandy
A couple of teaspoons of a posh tapenade from the delicatessen or the exotic-foreign-stuff shelves of the supermarket (sainsbury's do a lovely truffled mushroom tapenade that works well, but many others would also work - just check the ingredients as some tapenades have unexpected anchovies which would make them non-vegetarian)
A slice of emmental, gruyere or other interesting but mild cheese.

Heat oven to 190C
Remove the stalks of each mushroom and score the gills with a sharp knife to give the brandy some crevices to drizzle into, being careful not to cut all the way to the edge or all the way through which would allow the brandy to leak - place the mushroom gills-side-up in the middle of a square of pastry and go ahead and drizzle that brandy into the gills. Spread a bit of tapenade over the gills, and top with a bit of cheese. Fold the four corners of the pastry up over the cheese - you don't want the pastry to completely meet up and enclose the mushroom, you want the four corners to be hugging the mushroom but to leave a cross-shape of the cheese at the top exposed.
Bake these parcels until the pastry is puffed and golden. Serve with a medley of your favourite side-vegetables.

Start with a soup. Curried root veg with cream and crusty bread followed by Delia's tomato and goats cheese tart is a thing of beauty and requires very little effort. Use a fresh goats cheese - one without a rind, the welsh ones surely fall into this category. And serve with a green salad, baby potatoes.

Ottolenghi is your friend here as am I!

from me a starter of fried halloumi on a base of sliced roasted peppers (you can use the ones in jars) with a lemon, parsley and caper dressing.

Or an oven baked red pepper risotto as a starter, stir through some rocket and lemon juice just before serving, and shavings of parmesan

Some ideas from him are sweetcorn polenta with aubergine sauce...so easy its embarrassing, serve with a peppery side salad like rocket and or watercress

or perhaps a cauliflour cake...a bit of a faf but so delicious...

aubergine cheesecake.

caponata with a dill pilaff...the Leon recipe is good, I adapt it to roast the veg separately, make the tomato sauce and mix just before serving...

the caponata is also great as a starter, with grilled ready made polenta..

another really easy starter would be mixed wild mushrooms sauteed in butter and parsley, piled onto grilled sourdough rubbed with olive oil and garlic.

I personally think that pasta is a no no for a proper dinner party, especially for veggies. and only risotto for a starter, never the main.

These are really easy to make but I think they look pretty impressive and you can easily make a nice big dinner party meal if you have them with a salad, garlic bread etc. www.amuse-your-bouche.com/spinach-and-ricotta-dumplings/