Recently my stepson Jake was in town for a visit. One evening, we invited his long time friend Sara over for dinner, and she is lactose intolerant. So, I needed to come up with a casual dinner menu that was completely dairy free. As it turns out, our cookbook was a great place to start. I was able to create a scrumptious, make ahead menu, drawing primarily on recipes from the book (spinach salad, salmon and couscous). I added our Cannellini Bean Bruschetta for the appetizer, so I all needed to come up with was a good dessert. That turned out to be the biggest challenge – finding a dessert recipe that doesn’t contain butter, cream or milk isn’t easy! Then I hit on the idea of a sorbet. I created a chocolate sorbet and served it along with a purchased lemon sorbet. Jake, Sara – and my husband Robert – all loved the menu, and the non-lactose interant folks didn’t even notice the lack of dairy!
Here is the menu:
- Cannellini Bean Bruschetta
- Spinach Salad with Lemon-Dijon Dressing (in A Well-Seasoned Kitchen, p.65)
- Salmon and Summer Vegetables en Papillote (also in A Well-Seasoned Kitchen, p.142)
- Ginger Couscous (in A Well-Seasoned Kitchen, p.130)
- Dark Chocolate Sorbet
If you have never cooked “en papillote” (wrapping stuff in foil or parchment paper and then baking it), watch me walk you through how to make this salmon dish in this video.
Enjoy!
