The Allergy-Free Dinner Party: Roasted Garlic and Celeriac Soup

Every year we donate a couple of dinners to our church service auction; we pick a date and a theme, people bid on it during the live auction part of the fundraiser, and our guest list is made up of the highest bidders. In a fit of - ambition? pity? insanity? - I decided to offer a dinner that specifically accommodated food allergies and intolerances, since these are the people who typically can't go to dinner at someone else's house, or they have to bring their own food (thus defeating the whole purpose), or they have to fill up on side dishes and hope for the best. Also, when people hear about David's dietary restrictions, the response is usually "What do you eat?!" I thought it would be a great challenge to come up with a really excellent meal that everyone could eat that *wasn't* beans and rice. 

The menu couldn't include: gluten, dairy, nightshades, eggs, corn, sugar, canola oil, nuts, seeds, bananas, chocolate, tea, caffeine, shellfish, or oysters. Or rutabagas (one of my guests hates them - and really, what's one more restriction at this point?). I wanted recipes that I could make pretty much as written, without having to figure out a lot of substitutions. Most of all, I didn't want anyone attacking the pizza guy a la One Grain More. 

This turned out to be a colossal amount of research. It was also a great excuse to spend some quality time with cookbooks that don't make it into the usual dinner rotation; I think I'll be making quite a few new dishes in the weeks ahead. At the end of all that, here's what I came up with: 

Quinoa pilaf in cucumber cups
Marinated beet salad in endiveRoasted curried chickpeas

Roasted garlic and celeriac soup with mushroom ragout and scallion oil

Green salad with fig vinaigrette and lemon

Veal saltimboca with proscuitto
Wild rice risotto with roasted yams and mushroomsRoasted asparagus in balsamic vinaigrette

Sorbet trio: grapefruit, mango, and kiwi 


Every dinner party tends to have one dish that really stands out as everyone's favorite; at the Greek dinner, it was  the winter squash pilaf. Last night, it was the soup. Here's the recipe, adapted very slightly from Ming Tsai's "Blue Ginger." Don't skip the mushrooms and scallion oil - it's more work but it makes the dish. 

Roasted Garlic and Celeriac Soup

For the soup:
8 whole heads garlic (yes, really) 
Olive oil
3 large onions, chopped
6 cups celeriac, chopped (this turned out to be 4 heads)
1 cup celery, chopped (use the pale inner stalks with the leaves, not the big outer ones)
10 cups chicken stock

For the mushrooms: 
1 tablespoon garlic, finely chopped
4 large shallots, thinly sliced
4 cups mixed mushrooms, sliced - I used oyster, portabella, and white mushrooms since that's what was available at the grocery store
1/2 cup dry red wine
1 cup chicken stock
2 tablespoons tamari soy sauce
1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme

For the scallion oil: 
1 cup grapeseed oil
1/2 cup spinach
1 bunch scallions (the green part only)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Cut the tops off the garlic and put the heads in a baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cover the dish tightly with foil. Bake at 375 for about 45 minutes. When the garlic is cool enough to handle, squeeze the cloves out into a bowl. (You can do this part in advance.)

In a large soup pot, heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and cook the onions until well browned, about 10 minutes. Add the celeriac, celery, and roasted garlic and saute over medium heat until the vegetables start to soften, about another 10 minutes. Add the stock, bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for about 30 minutes or until the celeriac is very soft. 

While the soup is simmering, heat another splash of olive oil in a medium pan. Cook the chopped garlic and shallots until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook until soft, another 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the wine and cook until it's reduced by half, about 5 minutes. Add the stock, soy sauce, and thyme and simmer until the liquid is mostly evaporated, about 30 minutes or so. Don't let the pan dry out - there should be enough liquid left that nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan. 

Bring a pot of water to a boil and blanch the spinach and scallion greens for 2 minutes. Drain and run cold water over the greens to stop the cooking. Put the greens and salt into the blender and start processing, then slowly pour in the grapeseed oil with the blender running. Let the blender run for a couple of minutes so everything is well and truly pureed. (The recipe says the extra will keep in the fridge for about a week - I think I'm going to use it to make salad dressing.)

Let the soup cool a bit and puree it in batches in the blender. I'm normally a big fan of the stick blender but in this case, you really do want that super-smooth, velvety texture. I made the soup earlier in the day so it had time to cool almost completely before I pureed it; steam + blender = Jen burns her hands and has a mess to clean up. 

To serve, ladle the soup into a bowl, put about a tablespoon of the mushrooms in the middle, and drizzle a little scallion oil over the whole thing. 

NOTE: this makes a big batch of soup - we ate it for lunch, then I served it to 8 people for dinner, and there are still some leftovers. I imagine it would freeze pretty well, since there's no dairy.