Another day, another dinner party. Well, kind of. One of our best friends Alex came round with his friend Emily. Emily is a vegetarian. I have nothing against vegetarians, other than not understanding quite what they like to eat. I love vegetarian Indian food, I love vegetarian Italian food, but being faced with cooking for a veggie I went blank. I know there are a million dishes I could do, but none of them chose to pop up in my head I know it’s not rocket science but honestly guys, not a sausage (excuse the pun!).

It was driving me potty. If there are any vegetarians out there what do you cook to impress when you have mates round. Everything I could think of was a bit, well, everyday. Us meateaters are easy. You can have us drooling over ourselves with just the mention of a beef wellington, pork belly or slow roasted shoulder of lamb!! Just what dishes make you veggies go weak at the knees!!?

Thankfully I was writing up some recipes for the website and the key ingredient I’m working on this week is Puy lentils. As it happened I needed to test a vegetarian moussaka so I decided to go all Greek and started it all off with a little spot of mezze. I made a posh hummus topped with caramelised onions (I totally cheated and bought the hummus). I fried a sliced onion until caramelised and merely plonked them on top, try it, its always a dinner party pleaser and people think its ingenious! Its not, its just hummus topped with caramelised onions but it transforms it into something pretty swanky. This accompanied pan fried hullumi with lemon and extra virgin olive oil (oh yes, I would have babies with hullumi if it was possible), marinated grilled veg and pitta.

The moussaka was good. The reason I was writing it up for the website was I wanted to showcase the best ways of using puy lentils and I had had a vegetarian moussaka before and found it pretty good for a veggie dish. I’ve popped up a few pictures of how it was done but you’ll have to wait about a month for the recipe. A pretty nice meal I thought, but I still felt like I was shortchanging them, something was missing. The meat it seems.

Basically I need help and I want it from you guys. Mind-blowing dinner party vegetarian dishes. Give it to me…