Eating Art: Vegetable Course

I love buffets. I know, I know that vat of chicken curry is likely pullulating with any manner of bacteria and that the pasta course is just warmed up from the night before. But, I adore options, tastes, bits. Tapas is eminently appealing too me, though generally nixed by my husband who hates the price tag.

It has now been a month since my Eating Art party, and almost all of the dishes are no longer seasonable, but I still wanted to post the recipes for me to use next year.

The goals was to create a “choose your own eating adventure” in a single course. Our guests were asked to diagnose themselves and their temperaments and then self-medicate.

The use of food as medication is something that commonly occurs today (ever turned to ice cream to mediate a depression?) . But, in the Renaissance, the effort of dining on the part of the host and the guest. The host was to compose a meal plan that had offerings for all their guests, and then the guests had the responsibility to eat only that which helped them stay at their bests. A seven-course meal might consist of 20 dishes in each course so 140 dishes for one dinner.
As we are not historians, or historical reactors, we freed ourselves from whatever research that we did do about Renaissance meals (beware brassicas, they say.) And, we decided to focus on the core of this type of meal planning—the fact that an eater should consider the balance of cold, hot, wet, dry foods. And, here is what we created.

None of these dishes had a true recipe, but a plan, so I thought I would just enumerate all in this post. There were a couple that were more complicated, so I will post those this week. (Promise. They are written and in the queque!)

Also, as this was already such a big meal a some serious carbon footprint, we tried to make many of the dishes vegan. I starred the three that were vegetarian.

(4)Vegetables

Sanguine
Carrot and Walnut Salad—Simple, grated carrot, walnuts, grapeseed oil, mint, and sea salt. (Was delicious.)

Roasted and Dried Beet Salad—will post this week as the dressing was wonderful!

Red Lentil and Fennel Salad—will post this week because it was very easy and yummy


Choleric
Acorn Squash Kimchi

Tomato Terrine—Layer heirloom tomatoes and roasted red bell peppers. Add sea salt and basil infused oil at each layer.

*Watermelon and Feta Salad—Layer watermelon, pistachio, feta and arugula microgreens. Dress with grapeseed oil. Based on a dish we ate at Jaleo.

Melancholic
Baked Eggplant—Salt eggplant, chopped garlic (put it under the eggplant or it will burn), tomato and tomatillo and bake, dress with oil, asofoetida, and kimchi pepper.

Beans in Banana Leaves—will post this week

Roasted Pepper Rolatinis—roasted red pepper wrapped around cherry tomatoes and kalamata olives, served warm dressed with olive oil, cider vinegar and agave nectar.



Plegmatic
*Roasted Buttered Squash—We used Yugoslavian Finger Food squash because they are stunning. Roasted whole and ate them.

Cauliflower Handpies—Will post this week.

*Mushroom Ravioli—Filled handmade raviolis (egg dough) with shitake/pecorino mushroom filling.

Art Objects: many, many...
Pairing: A to Z Oregon Pinot Gris