Gateway vegetable dishes for the meat lover

It is usually a few days after a momentous culinary occasion - the successful conquering of a full rack of ribs, say, or a celebratory dinner that features five courses of pork butt - when my boyfriend, Dave, vows to limit his meat consumption.

In the waning days of 2010, after we'd finished a couple of particularly delicious chicken Parmesan sandwiches that had been preceded by a multicourse dim sum "appetizer" in Chinatown, he voiced it anew: "I admit that I am powerless over the lure of bacon, but I hereby vow to cook and eat more vegetables."

Then he turned to me. "You'll help me, right? You eat healthy things, like Grape Nuts."

It may be true that I crunch down the rocklike pellets on some mornings even though they taste of insulation and cause my teeth to ache. It makes me feel virtuous. But in Dave's case, we couldn't go from meat lover to sprouts and pellet cereals in one move. He'd tried this many times before, only to be sidetracked from his salad at the first whiff of meat.

For his resolution to have a real shot, we'd need a couple of gateway dishes - meatless ones that masqueraded as meaty ones. They'd also have to be fast and easy to make.

We settled on two: Mushroom bourguignon, a riff on the traditional beef dish made with pearl onions, carrots, wine and beef stock; and barley risotto.

Both are hearty, flavorful, and good dishes for beginning cooks.

We'd also use vegetable purees - onion to thicken the bourguignon sauce, and carrot to bind together the risotto.

I'm not sure what I think of recipes that trick kids into eating vegetables by dumping kale puree into brownies, but vegetable purees are a nice chef's tool in the savory kitchen. At the restaurant where I used to work, we'd go through quarts each week.

The idea was to make each vegetable taste like the best version of itself, in a form that could be swirled into soups, whisked into sauces to bind them in place of flour-and-butter roux or tossed with roasted vegetables. An added perk: They add a layer of flavor and nutrients without adding fat.

We cooks would start our purees first thing in the morning over low heat. In most cases the process involved a big pot, a load of thinly sliced vegetables and maybe a dash of water to get the vegetables started. Four hours later, once most of the moisture had been eked out of the vegetable, we'd run it all through a blender. The result was pure, potent vegetable.

Neither Dave nor I had four spare hours to mother our purees, so I came up with quick versions. A couple of days before our dinners I nuked the onions in the microwave and simmered the carrots in carrot juice. Both purees were done in 30 minutes and kept well for two days.

On two separate nights, with a cold wind whipping against the windows, we made the dishes, topping the barley risotto with oven-roasted butternut squash and crunchy pine nuts, and serving the mushroom bourguignon over noodles. They were bone-sticking and rich, perfect for winter. Though admittedly the dishes were a far cry from steamed vegetables and beans, we felt virtuous anyway and raided the fridge for leftover holiday sweets.

"If this behavior becomes a habit," I told Dave, wiping some cookie crumbs off my face, "we can always sneak some kale puree into the cookie dough."