Necessity, in cooking terms, is inevitably the father and mother of invention. Most of my happiest inventive moments in the kitchen have been caused by me having to stretch the old mind to get over a disaster, an ingredient that I had forgotten to buy, burning an essential ingredient while preparing or, often now, discovering that the person dining at Le Presbytere cannot tolerate something I was planning to feed them on.
When our latest clients booked we had no such last minute disruptions, they had warned us well in advance that they were both vegetarian and one of them was coeliac, they also said that they were staying with us for three nights but would only eat on one of them.
Strangely enough the problem of combining those two eating preferences did give me many headaches, as I thought of solutions I realised that I usually gave coeliacs meat or fish and only had to slightly adapt my sauces to exclude flour and that most of the vegetarian options which I produced tended to include flour, or breadcrumbs or pastry- all coeliac no- nos.
There is a salad I frequently make here though that I realised could easily be adapted. This is a Salade Composee of Lettuce, toasted walnuts, bacon, blue cheese and pear. Just by dropping the bacon I was home and dry.
I small glance through my own recipes yielded up my Vegetarian Sate in which the sauce was provided by ground peanuts rather than flour.
Dessert was a doodle, my own Chocolate Terrine was free of both dead animals and wheat, Sorted.
My problems started when they asked (having enjoyed their first breakfast) if they could eat with us two nights instead of one.
Back to the drawing board Martin.
A quick look in the fridge gave me my starter; there I had excellent Charantais Melon, ripe white peaches (my favourite fruit) and tomatoes. Peeled chopped and diced, dressed with seedy mustard and honey and topped with fresh mint from the garden this was beautifully refreshing and is certainly something I will try again.
Dessert was not a problem either, for many years I have been making Claudia Roden’s marvellous Orange and Almond cake which kills neither animal nor wheat in its manufacture.
Main course was making me sweat a little however.
I was contemplating a vegetarian version of Moussaka which I have done before which has a cheese soufflé top when I remembered that, of course, I would need to use flour in the soufflé.
This was the moment when the light went on.
When making dessert soufflé’s it isn’t always necessary to add flour, one makes a custard with the yolks and folds this into the beaten whites.
If this works for sweet custard why not for savoury ones too?
So I made my very first parmesan custard which made a most delicious soufflé topping, creamy and light it didn’t rise as spectacularly as the flour based one but was I thought an even better foil for the tomato base.
Here is the final version of this odd Moussaka hybrid which I have called (in honour of the ladies) Thompsons Moussaka.

Thompson’s Moussaka

I Medium Onion
1 Red pepper
6 Sticks Celery
1 Tin Chopped Tomatoes

1Tablespoon Balsamic Vinegar

1 Teaspoon Sugar
2 Aubergines
300ml milk
4 Large Eggs
100 g Freshly Grated Parmesan

Good Pinch Nutmeg

Salt and Pepper and Olive Oil

Peel and chop the onion, chop the celery and the pepper and cook these slowly in a covered pan until they are soft (about 30 mts) Then add the tomato, the vinegar and the sugar, season with salt and pepper and cook for another 10 minutes but watch carefully in case it sticks.
Slice the Aubergine and fry these slices on both sides until brown.
Put half the tomato mixture in an oven proof dish; put a layer of Aubergine on top, another layer of tomato and top with the remaining Aubergine.
(This can be done in advance to this stage.)
Separate the eggs, put the whites into a large bowl and the yolks into another bowl.
Beat the yolks and season with salt and pepper. Bring the milk to the boil in a small pan, once boiling pour over the yolks, transfer back to the pan and put back on the heat, let it come back to just under the boil, stirring all the time with a wooden spoon until it thickens (it will coat the back of the spoon)
While still hot stir in the parmesan.

To Serve.
Heat the oven to 200C, put the tomato mixture in this until it starts to simmer. Beat the egg whites until stiff, fold these into the yolks and spoon on top of the tomato mixture and put back in the oven for about 20 minutes until browned and risen. Serve immediately