99% Vegan, 98% Gluten Free – Pineapple with Basil

I am definitely a carnivore. I wish it wasn’t so, but alas, I do like eating meat and poultry. But I try to make several meat-free dinners a week and we have plenty of friends for whom I cook who are vegetarians. So this I can handle.

But when we invited our vegan friends over for dinner, I realized that this was a whole new ball game. No eggs or cheese or butter. Even fish sauce and honey would be banished from this meal. Then we doubled down on the challenge, by inviting additional friends, one of whom was gluten-free. Life became a lot more complicated.

I drew upon my catalogue of recipes, as well as fresh ingredients from the garden, and with modifications and substitutions, I created a seven-course small plates menu that was 99% vegan and 98% gluten-free.

Antipasto

Antipasto often includes cured meats and cheeses, but not this one. Here I served bruschetta on crostini, roasted red peppers with toasted pine nuts, and grilled zucchini, eggplant, and garlic scapes from the garden. The bread for the bruschetta was vegan, but not gluten-free, satisfying only two of our guests. Fortunately, there is a gluten-free bakery in Huntington where I live, (Wild Flours) where I purchased a gluten-free, but alas, not vegan, roll for the crostini. With a simple purchase, I was able to satisfy the needs of all of our guests.

Summer Rolls with Peanut Sauce

These delicious wraps are versatile; they can be filled with almost anything. This night I had guests roll their own, filling them with lettuces, mint, and cilantro all from the garden, as well as carrots, cucumbers, five spiced tofu, and Thai basil. We all dipped in peanut sauce. As the wrappers are made of rice and tapioca flours, they are naturally gluten-free. However, I had to substitute gluten-free tamari for the soy sauce (which contains wheat and therefore gluten) and brown sugar for the honey when making the dipping sauce. Just this once, I left the fish sauce out of the mix.

Mushroom Trio with Sugar Snap and Snow Peas in Sesame Oil

Mushrooms are always delicious and the three treatments they received all balance each other well, especially with the addition of Sugar Snap and Snow Peas in Sesame Oil, fresh picked from the garden.

Quick-Pickled Beech Mushrooms are quickly sautéed and pickled in a mixture of rice vinegar, sushi vinegar, sesame oil, chili flakes, and cilantro. King Trumpet Mushroom Yakatori from Bon Appetit magazine, highlights the meatiness of grilled mushrooms with a sweet-salty glaze. I used gluten-free tamari in place of the soy sauce. Finally Shitake Mushrooms in Oyster Sauce, modified from a recipe in Saveur magazine, rounded out the trio. I used a vegan version of oyster sauce to replace the original, although it contained soy sauce, making this one of only two parts of the meal that was not gluten-free or for which there was not a gluten-free substitute.

Larb with Pickled Onions and Seared Shishito Peppers

Larb is a Laotian ground meat salad with an abundance of fresh herbs and chili peppers that is frequently served in Thai restaurants and often wrapped in lettuce leaves in the United States. It is spicy and salty and sweet and sour, all at the same time, making for a riot of flavors in your mouth.

Of course I could not use meat for this meal, so I tried a vegan ground meat substitute made of soy for my usual recipe from Bon Appetit with very good results. I also skipped the fish sauce and used gluten-free tamari instead of soy sauce. My addition of finely chopped lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves made it slightly more authentic.

I rounded out the course with a shishito pepper, seared in a touch of oil and sprinkled with sea salt.

Kibbeh Stuffed Pepper

I often cook Kibbeh Stuffed Peppers with lamb, bulgur wheat, pine nuts, and sautéed onions. For this meal, of course I could use neither lamb nor bulgur. So I used the same vegan ground meat substitute on which I based the larb and I used quinoa in place of the bulgur. The results were excellent.

Roasted Cauliflower and Fried Polenta Cake Over Stewed Lentils

Several years ago as part of a small plates meal at the wine bar Briciola in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen, my wife and I had Grilled Jumbo Shrimp, Stewed Lentils and Polenta. I’ve re-created the recipe and served it on a number of occasions. For our vegan friends, I substituted crisp roasted cauliflower for the shrimp to admirable results.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie, Pineapple with Basil, and Mango with Garden Strawberries

The hardest course to make vegan and gluten-free is probably dessert, because you can’t use eggs, butter, cream, or flour to make a pastry, cake, or custard. I was all set just to serve fresh fruit, but my guests arrived with a vegan No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie, with a gluten-free, graham-style crust. Based on silken tofu, it tasted like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

To accompany it, I added fresh fruit: sliced, perfectly ripe Ataulfo mangoes, strawberries, fresh picked from the garden, and pineapple with basil. While the latter addition sounds odd, the basil and pineapple marry perfectly for an easy-to-make dessert.

Pineapple with Basil

Dessert can be one of the fanciest parts of a meal, although a simple dessert like this can shine as bright as any made by a high-end pastry chef. We first had it many years ago at the now closed French restaurant Le Bec-Fin in Philadelphia. One of the highlights of a meal at Le Bec-Fin was the pastry cart, from which you could choose to taste any and all of the beautiful desserts. I am certain that we took advantage. I’m sure they were all spectacular, but after all these years, it is the Pineapple with Basil that sticks out in my mind.

This recipe, which I re-created based on memory, is dead simple and can be made in a matter of minutes. (Just leave enough time for the flavors to meld.) The pineapple and basil work perfectly together, and it is a great closing to a meal, either alone or in concert with another dessert.

One note: Make sure to start with a perfectly ripe pineapple. It makes all the difference.

10 minutes, plus ½ hour sitting, serves 4

½ fresh, ripe pineapple, trimmed and cored, ½ cup finely chopped, the rest cut into bite-size pieces

1 Tbsp. sugar

8 – 10 fresh basil leaves, cut in chiffonade (long, thin strips, usually for garnish)

1. Macerate the fruit by mixing the finely chopped pineapple and sugar in a bowl that will fit all of the fruit. Using a potato masher, the bottom of a jar, or the back of a spoon, mash the pineapple and sugar together. This will release the juices from the fruit and provide a flavorful syrup.
2. Stir in the rest of the pineapple. Allow the mixture to sit for at least a half hour, and up to a couple of hours, at room temperature.
3. A few minutes before you are ready to serve dessert, mix in about ¾ of the basil. Just before serving, sprinkle the remaining basil on top as a garnish.

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